#it's literally just an extensive academic analysis

[bth3cowboi]

love conjeture, lh44 x reader

masterlist

pairing: lewis hamilton x mathematician!reader

summary: sometimes algorithms win championships, other times they help find love. (social media au)

mercedesamgf1

liked by yninmath, georgerussell63 and 879.301 others

mercedesamgf1 This year we want to give a special thank-you to Dr. Yn Ln! With the creation of her new algorithm focused on data analysis and her extensive collaboration this season our view in analytics evolved to unimaginable levels. We are forever grateful for her contributions and what they mean for the future of Formula 1. Thanks again Dr. Ln, and good luck with the thesis! 😎💻

tagged yninmath;

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yninmath thank you for the opportunity🫡💙 it was an honor to work alongside this great team

mercedesamgf1 👏💙

user1 omg work girlll!!

user2 just googled her and im going crazy like how do you have 3 phds at 27😭?

user3 graduated super early too shes kind of a genius lol

lewishamilton thank you miss yn💙

yninmath your welcome sir champion🥹

user4 ok this is cuteee

user5 you should be thanking him bffr

georgerussell63 Outstanding!🙌 Make sure to come back Dr. Yn

yninmath oh but the travelling😮‍💨

lewishamilton nah you’ll make it back

yninmath if you say so haha

yninmath

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yninmath currently picking up trash couches, writing thesis and remembering the friends ive made along the way 🤓💘

on a serious note, if anyone is interested in reading about topology feel free to read my new paper abt it (link in bio #influencer)

tagged bestfriend, roscoelovescoco;

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roscoelovescoco working’s hard🐾😵‍💫

yninmath or hardly working🤔

bestfriend surprised the couch didnt bring rats or something

yninmath no rats or fleas!!! its been a great couch #trashcouch #luckygirls

bestfriend please never use # again

user1 great paper dr yn😍 is there any way I could get your paper on the hodge conjeture for academical porpouses? magazines are too expensive, help a girl out🙏

yninmath dm me girl that should be free so make sure your class gets it too

user2 dr yn youre saving the nyu maths class of 25’🫡

lewishamilton no rest on break miss yn?

yninmath you know me already haha💞

user3 suspicious…

user4 what? they cant be just friends?

user5 I thought she worked for merecedes, what is this?

user6 she was only there to develop part of her thesis tho still won them another championship

liked by lewishamilton

f1paddockgossip

liked by pierregasly and 903.443 others

f1paddockgossip BREAKING! Lewis Hamilton was caught while vacationing in France with mathematician and Mercedes’ collaborator Dr. Yn Ln. The pair are rumored to be in a months-long relationship already, starting in the middle of last season.

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user1 NOOOOO

user2 isnt she like way younger than him? weird

user3 shes literally a grown woman lol she can be with whoever she pleases

user4 no cause they actually look really cute🥹 so happy for them

user5 right! she seems super nice

user6 i just know that man is confused everytime she talks numbers lmao the curse of dating a stem girlie

lewishamilton

liked by yninmath, f1 and 3.478.139 others

lewishamilton congrats on the finished thesis miss yn😉💙 love you

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yninmath love u and ty for the championship😘 would have failed otherwise

lewishamilton 😂😂

lewishamilton anything for my girl

yninmath 🥹

yninmath

liked by mercedesamgf1, lewishamilton and others

yninmath you best believe he sat on the #trashcouch #dearlordwhenigettoheaven

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bestfriend did it have fleas lewishamilton?

lewishamilton no but I was worried

yninmath booo tomatoes

bestfriend just buy a new one please

yninmath i believe in sustentability🫡🍃

lewishamilton there has to be a limit

lewishamilton ❤️❤️

yninmath love you sm

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——

a/n: ty for reading and i hope you enjoyed🩷 maybe ill be writing more for different drivers soon, so if anyone is interesed keep that in mind!

#f1 #lewis hamilton #lh44 #f1 x reader #f1 fanfic #f1 smau #f1 x you #lewis hamilton x reader

[frankingsteinery]

(for the ask game from a few days ago) could you do Victor for 2, 12, 15 and 24

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

i had to sit and think because this one was so hard to narrow down. on a surface level i find all sorts of things about him endearing from his mannerisms to his speech patterns, but i think the thing that got me hooked on victor as a character was how emotionally demonstrative he is, particularly for a male protagonist. this also extends generally to his love for nature, for his friends, and his siblings (disregarding the incestuous implications of his relationship with elizabeth...)

i think this was only intensified for me when i started delving into frankenstein academic essays and analysis and then, by extension, the frankenstein fandom, and found that en masse it was people criticizing victor for just what interested me to him in the first place: being emotional, and therefore somehow melodramatic, overreacting, self-centered, egotistical, etc. it was this kind of climate of victor-hate that pushed me to make a tumblr account in the first place. someone had to be the sole victor defender in this barren wasteland

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character?

this is silly and probably not the serious answer you were looking for but like 2 years ago a dear friend of mine and i were joking about how you could catch victor frankenstein in a mouse trap and ever since then his assigned fursona in my head has been a mouse:

15. What's your favorite ship for this character?

by far its waltonstein (robert x victor). im aware clervalstein is vastly more popular, and while im charmed by it in-canon i dont find most depictions of it to my taste. i don't see their relationship as wholly reciprocated–one-sided on walton's end–which is part of the reason why i like their dynamic so much: its established that walton romanticizes the unobtainable, chases the unknown, and that's why he hangs all his hopes on things he cannot feasibly reach. first becoming a famous poet and going down with the greats, then sailing to find the northern passage despite being an inexperienced captain, all the while hoping for this impossibly idealistic image of a companion who would be perfectly tailored to his interests and manners, and then, against all reason, he finds this in victor, wherein victor becomes an extension of this habit, who is dying and too hung up in the past and on martyring himself, because everyone who has grown close to him has been hurt for it, so he cannot love again, or at least in the way walton wants. yet victor still has a reciprocated interest and finds a friend in him, even shares the same sentiment of the importance of friendship, but like he says no man can "be to him as clerval was." its very much wrong place/time but the right person.

ive said this before but i think, too, that if victor had recovered and lived than walton may fall a little less in love with victor. their relationship was founded on their dynamic of sick/caretaker, and beyond that, victor would have already exhausted his story, so there's no air of mystery around him anymore–nothing for walton to glorify or romanticize. ultimately i think even if they had the best of intentions and loved each other, they could not have a healthy or fully mutual relationship, and part of the appeal to me is this tragedy!

24. What other character from another fandom of yours that reminds you of them?

im drawing a bit of a blank on this one because no other character encompasses just what victor Is to me, but theres a whole host of victor-esque characters i could name because he is the literal foundation for the mad scientist archetype. if i was pressed i think id say geoffrey tempest from sorrows of satan by marie corelli (beyond his blatant misogny), and i remember some parts of emil sinclairs early narration in demian by herman hesse reminded me of victor. lucifer/satan from paradise lost also, particuarly the bit where he says he cannot enjoy the beauty of earth for the suffering of his fall, but that almost feels like a cop-out answer.

lastly–and this one is completely unfounded–itd have to be double dee from EEnE.

#rob.txt #frankenstein #frankenstein the modern prometheus #victor frankenstein #gothic lit #asks

[bleachbleachbleach]

Weird Kidou Textbook Couple

So, I went to a conference a few weeks ago, and somehow ended up in the audience of *two different panels* where one of the panelists was this guy I decided I really could not stand. While we were generally aligned in terms of praxis and politics, he was just INSUFFERABLE as a human and, in my view, a performative grandstander. One of my notes was "god i cannot with this guy lmao."

Flashforward to this week: I am reading a monograph and it turns out IT'S WRITTEN BY HIS PARTNER. Parts of the first chapter are essentially love letters to him, I feel like I know their entire relationship history and their professionally formative trauma-bonding. Subsequent chapters continued to cite him, occasionally at length, unexcerpted pontification.

To which I'm like, omg seriouslyyyyyy but I also feel like this entire scenario has such big Gotei energy. Like, Soul Society's not that big, the Gotei is not that big; but they appear to have fairly extensive archives and I'm sure this kind of weird academic love letter-manifesto-subtweet formulation is an entire genre within them.

I thought about whom it would best attach to, in terms of our main and/or supporting cast, and I feel like it probably has 3rd Division energy (there's no way that division's relationship to their Captain has ever been normal), but honestly, I feel like I probably enjoy this most as a Joe Shinigami story. Possibly one that everyone in the Gotei has no choice but to know about.

Maybe it's the couple who wrote the kidou textbook series. Every single shinigami who graduated the Academy learned the fundamentals of kidou practice and development AND this couple's whole weird energy, and the people who end up in the Kidou Corps are either really good at kidou, OR felt called by the interpersonal dynamics/layers of tea on display in the textbook. The Kidou Corps is for shinigami who ~aren't like other shinigami. There are probably underground collectives who worship this textbook couple (elusive and reclusive in all ways put the page) and close read random passages in their manifestos championing the movement to Keep Shinnou Independent and outside the direct purview of the nobility and the Central 46.

(Byakuya, a graduate of Kuchiki Kumon, acts like none of this is or has ever been a thing that exists in the world.)

(Rukia literally read the textbook just for this)

(Hinamori has an entire kidou "continuing education" club that is at least 50% comparing notes across different cohorts of Academy graduates, just to get a sense of all the lore and interpretations of the kidou couple's whole deal)

(Hisagi also has one, a subset of the shinigami men's association. Hinamori's group has four binders full of color-coded analysis and Hisagi's has two flashcards, both of which were written by Iemura)

#no brain just bleach #bleach headcanons

[gothhabiba]

I think you’re being a little too generous toward people with “bad takes on Goodreads” given that the people being dunked on are largely white Westerners whose complaints about, for instance, racism or sexism are just as often that a book by a POC or a woman didn’t talk about race, colonialism, gender, etc. in *the exact way they are told to talk about it on Tumblr*, or are mad that books set outside the West don’t constantly hold their hand about those cultures and might require them to look up a location or historical person in an encyclopedia. Those aren’t people who are bravely critiquing literature that snooty Tumblr people who just want to defend their fav books don’t understand, they’re incurious people who don’t actually care about social justice or liberation except to justify their own ignorance. And sometimes none of these issues are even relevant to the review at hand, like the most recent viral one about Metamorphosis where the person just doesn’t want to engage with the idea that the book is not literally about “a bug” at all. Literary analysis does have a lot of racist, misogynistic, colonialist, queerphobic, classist dynamics but let’s be honest about what the posts in question are actually about

first of all, I’d like to ask which post or posts this is about, in particular. please don’t make me guess when this is something that I’ve talked about on multiple occasions in the past—as has been recently reaffirmed for me, that’s a great way to waste everyone’s time 😅

second of all, I find it odd that you seem to believe I’m trying to present a complete picture of the culture on goodreads (or anywhere else that people outside of academia talk about literature), rather than what I’m pretty sure I’ve actually been trying to do—namely, to respond to some of the specific rhetoric that some people use to lambast non-academic discourse about literature (and, by extension and often in very personal terms, the non-academics who produce it), and to speculate about some of the potential implications or sources of that specific rhetoric. I don’t think I’ve said anywhere that anyone who criticises any layperson’s reading, on goodreads or elsewhere, of a work of literature, in any terms, is automatically reaffirming harmful ideas about “literacy,” “intelligence,” and the connexion of both to moral worth on an individual level.

I think you might benefit from reading this post, which makes it clear that what we’re talking about is not whether certain takes are “good” or “bad,” but rather whether it’s accurate, edifying, or ethically acceptable to use discourses of “intellect,” “intelligence” and “stupidity,” and “literacy” to disparage those takes. I also think you might find this post helpful, which addresses reactionary readings of literary works.

lastly, I really dislike the implication that I am somehow not being “honest”!

#Anonymous

[stellasolaris]

Why I think Stella deserves more credit for her intelligence

It’s common knowledge that academics have never been of great interest or strength to Stella. In fact, she often runs late on assignments, checks her appearance in the mirror in the classroom, or looks for loopholes to avoid studying. Moreover, her bad grades are no secret to anyone, and she has gone as far as to boast about her poor permanent record in season two. 

Because of her seemingly blatant dismissal of education, the rest of the girls often underestimate her and are surprised when she performs even the simplest of spells. But what they (and perhaps, by extension, the audience) do not realize is that while Stella may not have the academic smarts or discipline, she possesses the kind of intellect that typically gets overlooked and rarely nurtured in the traditional classroom.  

To start, I will open with a scene in 2.22. Here the girls are gathered around a pile of fruits to perform a magic-dispelling charm. Musa draws a circle around the pile and recites the first part of the spell. Stella steps forward and completes the spell. Flora, who has been quietly observing the girls in the background, congratulates Stella for remembering the correct words. Have a look at the exchange:  

[ID: A screenshot of Stella performing a magic-dispelling charm. Her eyes are closed in concentration, and her hands are raised in front of her. There are wisps of pale yellow light emanating from her fingertips. Flora is standing behind Stella with her hands clasped together. End ID]  

Flora: Wow, a magic-dispelling charm! Looks like you were paying attention in Griselda��s class, after all.

Stella: Oh, not at all. I’m just naturally brilliant.

It’s obvious that Stella is joking around and not bragging about herself, evidenced by her playful tone and a little curtsy at the end, but she is not entirely wrong in her assessment. Aside from the play-on-words, i.e. being brilliant in the most literal sense (light powers) and being brilliant in terms of intelligence (brain power), she does prove to be naturally brilliant throughout the series. Not just in the literal sense of the word, to be clear, but in the sense that she possesses a high level of intuitive smarts. Let me elaborate. 

In 2.26, Layla and Stella face a complex color spectrum problem before they can open the portal to the realm of Relix. Layla starts fretting over the task at hand, insisting that the other girls would have been a better fit to solve the problem. Stella stays surprisingly quiet, only commenting on the clash of colors when the puzzle appears in front of them. Then, without any preamble, she goes to rearrange the color pieces herself and solves the puzzle in a matter of seconds. It’s an impressive show of talent for someone as young as her, and in a dire situation too. 

Athena: It’s a complex color spectrum analysis problem. No one has ever solved it so fast before.

Stella: See, fashion sense is a vital skill after all.

Except it was not just her fashion sense that helped her solve the problem. It was thanks to her visual-spatial intelligence that she managed to crack the puzzle in such a short time. That is, her ability to think intuitively, her capability to retain and transform visual images, and her innate skills to perform visualization and spatial reasoning. People with high visual-spatial intelligence tend to be artistic and skilled at solving visual puzzles, and this perfectly lends itself to her interests in fashion design. Think of drafting patterns and determining rotations in clothing pieces, all processes that require visual-spatial intelligence to some extent. 

[ID: A screenshot of Stella looking up at the color spectrum puzzle. She looks contemplative. Her left hand is on her hip while her other hand is propped underneath her chin. Layla is standing in the background, looking ahead of her. Eight pixies are hovering overhead. End ID]

The range of her intelligence does not end there. If you pay attention to her dialogue, you will notice that Stella displays dexterous use of language. Her sharp and witty remarks not only offer comic relief in tense situations but showcase her cleverness, translating into a delightful sense of humor and wit. Interestingly, several studies have suggested that humor is associated with intelligence. And it makes sense because creating humor requires a series of mental operations, both cognitive and emotional. For reference, below are some clever or otherwise memorable quotes from her. 

Disclaimer: The first three quotes are from the RAI dub while the rest are from the 4Kids dub.

What did you do, comb your hair with an egg beater? 

Yes, apple-scented (shampoo). That'd go with the worm. 

Yo-hoo, anyone out there? It’s like the mall on a Monday. 

Turned to stone? Talk about being statuesque. 

If Riven wants to get eaten, I say “Bon Appetit,” right? 

Added to that, Stella is a people person. Her ability to read nuances in people, combined with her quick-wittedness, is not only tied to her interpersonal intelligence (understanding social situations and behavior of other people) but also linked to how she thinks and connects pieces of information. A good example is seen in 2.16, where in spite of hardly knowing anyone at the party, she successfully discovers that one of the people impersonating evil sisters is Mitzi. All it takes is a brief glance at the posture of the raven-haired girl, and she’s figured it all out. In other words, Stella is extremely perceptive and skilled at reading non-verbal body clues. 

A facet of her personality that I’ve always admired is that she has zero fear of failure (as in, her determination to achieve her goals is strong enough to override her doubts and not make her stall or sabotage her chances for success), and we see this in 1.12 where she is committed to winning the pageant contest after having lost the previous year. That in itself may not directly correlate to her intelligence, but having a fearless approach to life allows her to take risks more than an average person would, which in turn gives her leverage to unlock her unrealized potential. For instance, she realizes her wings can handle the strong winds after she lets go of the flying leaf “raft” in 3.12. That said, I should add that her courageous nature can also lead to disastrous consequences, like the potion lab incident. But hey, you win some and you lose some; that’s how life works. At any rate, intelligence =/ infallibility.  

[ID: A screenshot of Stella holding onto a giant leaf raft that is in the air. Layla, who looks worried, is crouched at the edge of the raft. Layla is holding one of Stella’s gloved hands. Behind them are lavender-tinted grey clouds. End ID]  

The other important detail to notice is that Stella always pulls her weight as a team member. She has proven to be more than capable of taking care of herself and others on several occasions. (1.21, 3.17) Therefore, she doesn’t deserve to be called “dumb” just because she doesn’t perform well at school or because she’s too honest to say the first (and not always the right) thing that comes to her mind. And throughout the seasons, the other girls become less prejudiced and more trusting and confident in her abilities. Griffin even calls Stella “very clever” for thinking of using a mirror spell in 3.14. To illustrate the point, you can compare and see the difference in tonality between the opening dialogue (see above) and the following dialogue piece where Stella saves Roxy in 4.07:

Layla: Nice one, Stella! I see someone has been reading the book of fairies.

Stella: I knew there was more to it than pretty pictures.

In addition, while it is not strictly stated in the show, it is implied that Stella does sometimes read books in her spare time. To name a couple of instances, she is seen lounging around with a book in hand in 1.18 and reading the book of fairies in 4.16. To some degree, this is an indication that she enjoys reading, and most importantly, learning. Maybe not within the confines of the four walls of a classroom or the courses in her study curriculum, but the framework of her own interests and endeavors.

#winx club #winx #winx stella #winx meta #winx club meta #(not taking into account the later seasons) #metas #stella meta #winxmeta

[moonlit-tulip]

I wish translations of anime and visual novels and so forth followed more of the same patterns as scholarly translations of out-of-copyright stuff. Less "our group has claimed translating this, you go do something else", more aggressive efforts to cover as many points as practical along the Pareto frontier defined by the various tradeoffs in translation.

Like, look at the variety of translations you can find for something like the Iliad. Multiple new translations coming out via the big academic publishers each decade, each trying to optimize on different axes, and that's before you get into the less formally-published ones like MC Lula's sadly-probably-abandoned rap translation.

The Iliad is an outlier, of course. Most works, even relatively-popular ones, don't get nearly that many translations. But it's an outlier which is indicative of the culture of the people doing the translating. It's very much a multi-translation optimization process, creeping increasingly closer to optimality on whichever axes the different translations are optimizing on, one translation at a time.

(Or, sometimes, ceasing to creep forward on some axes; when I read the Iliad for school, we were using Lattimore's translation from all the way back in 1951, which was apparently still the state of the art on whatever axes my school cared about as of 2015.)

But fan-translation, as practiced on the modern internet, doesn't seem to work that way. Nor does official translation, for those works which get licensed. Among the fans, there's this terrible cultural norm wherein it's considered rude to translate something another group has already done. (Or, sometimes, even something that they've just said they're going to do eventually, judging by the shreds of drama I've seen around the translation of the Tsukihime remake.) Among the official licensors, there seems to be a pattern where, when a new company gets the license for a given work, they might do a new translation (or they might not), but licensors want exclusivity and so new companies getting the license is a relatively-rare occurrence.

It's probably hard to fix this on the officially-licensed-translation end, given economic practicalities. The licensors have minimal incentive to put out many translations, since each translation is expensive to produce and most people will buy only one; the licensors have incentive to continue getting exclusivity deals, for the same reason; and the licensors have incentive (and legal authority) to suppress fan-translations, also for the same reason.

But I'd really like to see a change towards a more Iliad-like direction on the fan-translation end. Instead of a single group squatting on each work irrespective of what their translation is optimizing for and how well it does at that, let all sorts of different translations propagate and slowly build out to the Pareto frontier of translation-optimality. Let one group do a thoroughly-literal translation with extensive footnotes for purposes of in-depth analysis, and one do a fully localized rice-balls-are-jelly-donuts-now translation, and one do a new attempt at a middle-ground translation aimed at Paradigmatic Anime Fans because they think they can do better than the somewhat-mediocre one of that sort which a different group previously did, and so forth, all working separately on their individual projects but working together towards the shared goal of giving people more and better options for how to consume whatever story they're translating.

(Or maybe the story languishes in obscurity and ends up with just one translation anyway. Making a good translation takes a lot of time and a lot of effort, after all. But I'd much rather have stories do so for the good reason of limited translator-capacity, rather than for the bad reason of [weirdly exclusivity-demanding cultural norms among the translators].)

#Archive #Translation #the new fate/stay night translation that's apparently in progress seems like a good sign of movement in this direction #as does the relative acceptance of translation-scrubbing projects #(which i didn't mention in the post but which *are* in their own way optimizing in the same direction) #but there's lots of progress still left to be made

[dramaticviolincrescendo]

How would describe shameless to someone who never heard of it? How would you describe the specific characters?

I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve these super fun asks, but thank you so much! :D It’s funny that you sent this because I did actually describe the show to someone not too long ago, and I didn’t like how I did it in hindsight. I felt like I didn’t do it enough justice. So, I get a second chance to try again!

“How would you describe Shameless to someone who never heard of it?”

Shameless is a show about how life doesn’t always go our way, we don’t always do the right thing, and we’re all imperfect beings—but we still deserve a chance regardless. The Gallaghers begin the series nearly at rock bottom, doing anything they have to for their literal survival, but also to keep their family together. Sometimes that means supporting each other when they’re in a difficult spot, banding together to help their neglectful father even though he doesn’t deserve it, or even committing petty crimes to sustain their meager way of life. As they get older and have more agency in and control over their lives, the nature of their problems shifts, and they learn from their own mistakes rather than reacting to their parents’. The same trends unfold for the people and families in their orbit, showing that various trials and tribulations can impact anyone of any social standing. Not everyone gets a happy ending; not everyone gets what they want. However, they grow and learn how to manage both the hand that they’ve been dealt as well as the bed they’ve made for themselves. That, after all, is life.

Shameless is a “dramedy” where the comedy elements utilize primarily satire, which sets it apart from the popularity of slapstick and dry comedies over the last decade. By nature, the show therefore addresses difficult, uncomfortable, and controversial topics in manners and utilizing methods that are designed to make us laugh at the absurdity while forcing us to think about these topics in ways that we may have avoided otherwise. This format has been established since the pilot episode and certainly is not to everyone’s taste. I wouldn’t recommend this show to anyone who prefers that such issues be addressed with a deeper analysis on the part of the characters rather than the audience, which is the general tendency in drama pieces rather than shows of this genre.

“How would you describe the specific characters?”

For this, I’ll focus on the main Gallagher family, Kev, V, and Mickey, as they’ve been the constant presences on the show since the start. I’ll also keep it relatively short since I could write essays on each one, and that would bore anyone who hasn’t heard of Shameless (and 95% of those who have) to tears.

1.      Frank Gallagher is the stereotypical “deadbeat” who plays the system for every penny so that he doesn’t have to work, choosing to fund his addictions rather than support his family. He will go to any lengths if it means preserving this lifestyle—mild, absurd, and even heinous. He functions as something of an anti-hero, being more a threat to the family’s stability in early seasons than a boon and gradually sinking into obscurity because of his children’s growing indifference as he burns one bridge after another with them. Frank prides himself on espousing only the values that will get him what he wants in a given circumstance. In specific instances, that has meant showing a measure of love and affection for his children that evidence has proven exists deep, deep below the surface. In others, he’s a wild card. Frank’s various fatal flaws have included arrogance, addiction, selfishness, and an avoidance of any and all responsibility.

2.      Fiona Gallagher is the eldest and began the series as the rock of the family because, to put it simply, she was the only person able to do it. She selflessly cared for her younger siblings so that they wouldn’t be scattered into foster homes or adoption thanks to her parents’ neglect, even to the point where she gave up portions of her life and blurred the lines between her roles as sister versus caregiver, which became a sticking point in later seasons when her siblings didn’t need or want a mother-figure anymore. While Fiona was initially very responsible with regards to raising her siblings, she therefore sacrificed a lot of opportunities that were important for her development as a young adult and exhibited an immaturity typical of people her age that impacted other arenas of her life, especially relationships. As her role as caregiver dwindled, that immaturity and the norms prevalent in her environment became more pronounced with her newfound freedom, and she struggled greatly in the face of what she viewed as making up for lost time. Fiona’s various fatal flaws have included ambition, a “martyr complex,” and viewing her family as an impediment to her ambitions later in life instead of a support system.

3.      Lip Gallagher is the oldest son. He began the series with a hefty chip on his shoulder. Intelligent, quick-witted, and calculating, Lip was constantly referred to as a sort of diamond in the rough and clearly came to believe it. This led to a very fascinating dynamic within the family and his other interpersonal relationships as his love for and desire to protect his family was balanced by a sense that his way was the best way—the only way, really. A combination of poor choices and unfortunate circumstances beyond his control resulted in a very real “fall from grace,” by South Side standards, and Lip has worked hard to claw his way back from where he was in the middle of the series. Where Fiona spiraled further as she withdrew from her family, Lip leaned on them and others in his support system—and it saved him. Lip’s various fatal flaws have included arrogance, contempt for power structures in which he is not at the top, and trying to solve other people’s problems at the expense of dealing with his own.

4.      Ian Gallagher is the middle child and something of an outlier in his own right where his family is concerned. He began the series seeming to have his shit together: he balanced school, ROTC, and work, excelling in all three at just fifteen years old. He was plagued by his status in the family at times, not old enough to have more control over his situation while not young enough to shrug off a lot of it on Fiona and Lip, and wanted something for himself more than anything. It’s that combination that put him in an extremely vulnerable position, because while he was the picture of responsibility and didn’t orchestrate as many scams as his siblings (though he was involved in plenty—he is South Side and a Gallagher, after all), it gave him—and his family—the false impression that he was more mature and in control than he was. Multiple older men preyed on him because of that, and in his thirst to find something that was solely his and someone he could care for outside his household, he viewed them as relationships rather than abuse. Like Lip, Ian truly hit rock bottom in a different manner, although the causes of his descent were more heavily skewed beyond his control. In true Ian form, however, he remains driven to find the straight and narrow—and stick to it as much as he can. Ian’s various fatal flaws have included ambition, a “hero complex,” compartmentalizing to the point of narrowmindedness or naïveté, and ignoring his own needs in pursuit of fulfilling others’.

5.      Debbie Gallagher is similar to Lip in that she has always been clever, cunning, and driven to get what she wants. Debbie began the series in a difficult position, going to school and contributing to the household while ultimately not in control of anything that was going on. From the start, all she wanted was a functional family, and it colored her behavior throughout the first six seasons of the show. In many cases, that meant doing whatever she could to hold everyone together: investigating Fiona’s lying boyfriend, running a daycare so that Fiona could work all night and still find time to sleep, prompting Fiona to more actively worry when Ian ran away and helping Lip locate him, and caring for Liam a lot of the time while he was a baby. Over the years, as the dysfunctions racked up, she sought an escape through boyfriends and a baby of her own. The means by which she attempted and ultimately failed to achieve these goals were at times reprehensible and spurred on by both her immature ignorance and the culture in which she was raised. Debbie’s various fatal flaws have included self-centeredness, envy, manipulative tendencies, and not thinking or caring about the implications and consequences of her actions for herself or the people involved.

6.      Carl Gallagher began the series as a real mess. The word “sociopath” comes to mind. He was the stereotypical “wild child” whose behavior embodied the dysfunctional nature of the family and their environment. He destroyed toys for fun, tortured animals, physically bullied children at school, and was held back multiple times for poor academic performance. Carl was never as academically bright as the other Gallagher siblings, but his street smarts were nigh unparalleled and, like Lip, he could probably survive anywhere. Over time, Carl underwent a remarkable transformation: embracing the negative stereotypes of his environment, he dove towards rock bottom with gusto only to realize that the thug life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Once again, he paralleled Lip and Ian’s trajectory in leaning on his family when it became too much, and he’s turned his entire life in the opposite direction to pursue a path that he hopes will lead to helping people rather than hurting them for his own gain or reputation. Carl’s various fatal flaws have included lack of foresight, a penchant for violence, and ignorance.

7.      Liam Gallagher is still very young and therefore tougher to fully characterize as his development isn’t as extensive. Right now, he’s the same age Debbie was when the show began, and we’ve seen just how far she’s come. So, for the time being, Liam is extremely bright and has grown up with a great deal more privilege than his siblings. He doesn’t remember saving for the squirrel fund with fears of not being able to eat all winter in mind. He doesn’t remember what it’s like to worry about Frank or Monica’s actions having an enormous and lasting impact on them. He doesn’t remember Lip dropping out of school and moving out of the house, Monica’s actions at Thanksgiving, Fiona crying over crumpled bills from working at the sport bar, Ian going missing for four months and coming home a different person, or Debbie lying about Patrick just so they could keep a roof over their heads. Liam didn’t grow up with those things, and so he has the luxury of being a kid a bit more of the time. However, because his parents aren’t around and Fiona left the house a long time ago despite being his guardian, he has matured quickly in lieu of any real supervision.

8.      Kevin Ball and Veronica Fisher have been the Gallaghers’ closest allies in the neighborhood all this time. Kevin isn’t the brightest academically or in terms of common sense, but he has a good heart and makes the best decisions when he uses it. He has been through a lot, between foster care as a kid, a crazy ex-wife, trying to keep the Alibi afloat, and raising twin daughters that they definitely didn’t have the means for when they discovered that they were expecting two kids. And Veronica… Well, she’s quite literally his other half. She’s savvy and smart, intelligent and assertive—they complete each other. They began the series as an established couple experiencing some growing pains, especially when Veronica was giving the Gallaghers everything from use of their shower to their toaster while Kevin insisted that they needed to focus on themselves before they could help Frank’s kids. (He talked a good game, but when the chips are down, Kevin has always been there for them too.) They’re good people who’ve been given a few bad shakes and taken a few wrong turns, but their love for each other, their kids, and the Gallaghers has made them a surprisingly strong heart of the show. Kevin’s various fatal flaws have included lack of foresight, ignorance, and not standing up for himself. Veronica’s various fatal flaws have included avoiding communication about her feelings and indecisiveness.

9.      Mickey Milkovich is the stereotypical personification of their environment. He began the series as a poor thug—and a dirty one, at that—who exuded such a presence in the neighborhood that he instilled fear at a mere glance. His family functioned as a foil to the Gallaghers, perhaps what they would have been if Frank had been a different person or they’d fallen even further. Mickey didn’t benefit from an emotionally supportive family that banded together to provide for more than merely monetary concerns, not to mention that his father was openly and violently homophobic, so it took a great deal of time and overcoming numerous internal and external hardships for him to come to terms with who he is on many levels. Over the years, Mickey was self-employed or acted with his family as a drug dealer, a pimp, and a prison hitman; worked for a drug cartel; and has engaged in any number of other scams and illegal activities in order to make ends meet—and he has been quite happy to keep doing so as it plays to his strengths. Mickey is remarkable, however, because he has always been a multifaceted character whose problematic decisions, abrasive mannerisms, and questionable lifestyle didn’t and don’t negate that he cares very deeply and will do literally anything for the few people he allows to get close to him, specifically Ian. Mickey’s various fatal flaws have included lack of foresight, avoiding communication about his feelings, and not reaching out for help when he needs it.

~*~

That was quite a bit longer than I initially intended, but I had a great time putting this together. Thank you again for the ask! 

#shameless us #gallaghers #you asked #this was so fun #shameless #shameless meta

[tf2workbench]

Random critical hits

You probably have an opinion on them, no matter what kind of games you like. I sure do. 

With this post, I intend to do more than just say what I think; I want to dive in and figure out how critical hits work with players’ emotions and enjoyment.

To start off, I want to emphasize that critical hits go back to the earliest tabletop RPGs, especially Empire of the Petal Throne. Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman Barker (also known as “the forgotten Tolkien” for his extensive worldbuilding and academic credentials) incorporated critical hits as a way to “simulate the ‘lucky hit’ on a vital organ.” In short, it’s a realism thing. 

Mechanics that originated in tabletop games often, as computers became more advanced, spread to the digital world. Critical hits came with them. (Unfortunately, although my training is in history, I’m not an expert on the evolution of video games. I can’t confidently locate the first digital game to have critical hits, but I know it was present as far back as the early ‘90s.)

Are they good? The purest form of crit is simply random. In TF2, most weapons have a chance to crit. The chance increases with damage dealt - up to 12% for ranged weapons, provided you’ve dealt 800+ damage in the last 20 seconds.

This is discussed in the in-game developer commentary, specifically Kelly Thornton’s node on Gravel Pit:

“Critical hits are one of the features that resulted from our focus on pacing. The critical hits system attempts to slightly influence the highs and lows of the game by increasing the chance of a critical hit based upon the player's recent performance. In summary, the better you're doing the more likely you'll continue to do well. This helps create those rare high moments where a single player goes on a rampage and gets three or four kills in rapid succession.”

Here we can see that critical hits are one of the ways that gameplay can temporarily get more exciting, creating what Thornton calls a “high moment.” Let’s break that down in emotional terms.

When a player gets a random critical hit, they experience an unexpected surge in power. For most people, this is quite a rush, almost like adrenaline. Since crits can often turn the tide of a difficult engagement, they may go on to have other successful battles rather than dying in the previous one, creating a series of good feelings for the player. Crits aren’t reliable enough to keep you alive forever, especially against skilled enemies, but they can help.

(Admittedly, I always feel a little guilty when I get a random crit. But only a little.)

On the flip side, when a player gets hit by a random critical, they usually experience a negative feeling. A lot of people have a need for stability and at least a degree of control - although this is mostly important for our physical lives, it also comes into virtual environments. Crits disrupt that sense of (relative) predictability that comes from having stable, roughly-universal game mechanics. Oftentimes, there’s nothing you can do to defend against a random crit, which gives a feeling of helplessness. Because of this, they can cause dismay, fear, and anger to the players on the receiving end. This negative feeling is often proportional to the experience you missed out on by dying - if it interrupted a massive killstreak, for example, it tends to hurt more.

It’s these dueling feelings that come into play when randomness is factored in. Is it better to give one player a powerful high at the cost of another’s low, or is it better to give everyone an experience with no randomness?

That is a very broad philosophical question that I have no idea how to properly evaluate. But I can say what I think about TF2′s unique system.

Weighting crits by previous damage dealt tends to reward certain classes over others. More importantly than that, it tends to reward players who are better at dealing damage. This means it tends to favor those who can aim better, giving them an edge over newbies. I can’t say I like this; it’s better to give less-skilled players a chance to upset the game, since being on the receiving end of a curb-stomp is even less fun than dying to a random crit. The good news is that anyone can crit, providing that opportunity for an upset, but it’s more common for higher-damage (ergo, usually more skilled) players.

But remember that this is based on damage dealt (or healing, in the case of the Medic). This means that players are rewarded for playing aggressively rather than hanging back. It’s small motivation compared to, say, a ticking map timer, but it’s a factor that helps make gameplay much faster and more interesting. So there’s facets to random crits that prevent me from immediately saying yes/no.

Crits done right I can say when critical hits (as a whole, not just random ones) are done well. TF2 actually provides a great illustration of this even while having more debatable random crits.

Critical hits are a great design choice when they’re predictable (on both sides) and in response to a specific condition. This gives that “high” of massively boosted damage, but puts you in control of it. Similarly, the opponents have more control over their experience - they and their team have ways to stop or avoid critical hits. As an example, when you see an Engineer brandishing a glowing red shotgun, you can run. Or you could have worked to destroy that sentry before it got kills. Dying to it hurts, but it doesn’t feel particularly unfair; this means that the “low” is much higher less low.

Similarly, I can also compliment how crits work on melee weapons. The chance is much higher - starting at 15% and scaling up to 60% with damage dealt - which makes melee crits something you can almost plan for. A 12% chance of a crit rocket is hard to properly gamble on; you can’t exactly avoid every Soldier for fear of being splattered. But a 60% chance of an uppercut punch to your face? That you can predict and more easily avoid.

Melee weapons are also a lot easier for the opponent to control. Most classes have good ranged options, meaning that those who choose to walk in with a melee weapon are quite literally bringing a knife (or bat, fist, bonesaw, whatever) to a gunfight. This means you can usually see the attacker coming before they wallop you; it’s never “out of nowhere” unless you made a mistake.

Melee random crits aren’t perfectly done - they’re still an element of randomness in an otherwise pretty uniform-rules game - but they’re much better than ranged random crits. They, alongside guaranteed crits on certain weapons, are a great way to give players powerful positive feedback while not hurting the opponents’ feelings (at least too much).

In short: are random crits good? I can’t say, but I can present my analysis of what they do. Are melee crits good? I’d cautiously say yes, but draw your own conclusions. Are guaranteed crits good? I’d say yes, but you know... draw your own conclusions. Maybe there’s something I didn’t consider!

Finally, I want to give a major thanks to @operaland for suggesting I talk about this - I love getting feedback, and I’m happy to chat with y’all!

#tf2workbench #tf2 #team fortress 2 #critical hits #random crits

[toxicsamruby]

ok saw a post on here and i’m c+p’ing the text but u can find the author w enough effort i’m sure. and do u have any response or particular opinion abt it because... euck. sry for the long ask i value ur perspective

“baffled by the recent genre of "you shouldn't only consume shippable media" posts like that's actually a real problem. seeing people on tumblr talk about fandom stuff and concluding that therefore they must have literally nothing else going on in their lives is a really weird logical leap tbh. like, it's tumblr. i come on here to be gay and look at cat videos. that is this website's sole purpose for me. love and light to you all but i have zero interest in engaging in in-depth analysis of foundational literature with you

having said all this: analysing media for homoerotic subtext is actually the single most noble and academic thing anyone could do with their time and people who engage in that are literally heroes”

sry long post anon again. the c+p was in the context of a supernatural blog to be clear

this is such a bad faith take its kind of unbelievable? its not a “recent genre of post” its something that has literally been pervasive in fandom since its inception in pop culture. this article talks about how this “shippable media” thing is something that happens because fans generally only care about white (usually male) pairings and will disregard characters of color, and by extension any part of the story that might deal with themes involving said characters.

analyzing media for homoerotic subtext IS a literary pursuit. nobody ever said it wasnt. nobody cares if u wanna come on tumblr to screw around and do nothing nobodys THAT interested in ur take. it just comes off a little odd when people come on tumblr and do pages and pages of thoughtful analysis for white gay people and then say that analysis of racism in the Same Story is too in depth or boring for tumblr.

anyways. i answered this question cuz i felt strongly abt it and u asked me to answer honestly but i would ask that in the future if u want my opinion on something like this to either just summarize the post ur talking abt or dm me privately cuz this is absolutely not intended to pick fights or be a personal attack. i have no idea who wrote this post and i dont care

#asks

[snowdice]

Gaps in His Files (Part 8) [Relabeled; Refiled Series]

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Logan/Patton

Characters:

Main: Logan, Patton

Appear: Remy, Virgil (but only in the epilogue)

Summary:

Logan Berry has learned many things the last 10 years: a lot of math and physics, a bit of humility, and how to be a hero being just a few. Through his education, his experience teaching, and his exploits as the superhero Bluebird, he’s changed in a lot of small and large ways. He has recorded these changes in well-organized documents and files. He’s even had to create two new file designations: a red one for files about his moonlighting at Bluebird, and a light blue one dedicated to his boyfriend, Patton.

When Bluebird is targeted by a memory device and all of those 10 years of progress suddenly disappear, Patton Sanders and Logan’s extensive files are left as his only resource to get those memories back. But what is Patton supposed to do when there are clear gaps in his files? And what does he do when he is one of them?

This is set 25 years before Sometimes Labels Fail though it’s story is completely independent of it and it is not necessary to read that one first.

Notes: Superhero AU, memory loss, past child abuse, past child neglect, unhealthy ideas about ones place in relationships, emotional suppression, self-deprecating thoughts, medical procedures mentioned, very brief unhealthy views of sex

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

Erm. Logan says a few not so nice things about people who struggle academically which are very wrong. I think from context it is clear that the author doesn’t agree with it. As a teacher I do not endorse his statement and in the missing 10 years he’s learned the lesson for himself... he’s just a very dumb smart high school kid. That being said, I thought I might warn you all especially with the fact that people might be in the middle of finals and a little emotionally vulnerable to that one.

Patton spent most of the morning getting Logan familiar with his red files while also asking him subtle questions about his real opinions on things. The mention of the crying thing did sting a bit even though Patton already knew it made Logan uncomfortable. Patton knew that from the beginning, but he’d still let Logan force himself to try to help when Patton was upset.

God, Patton was a bad person.

After he’d helped Logan get a good feel of the newer files, they started brainstorming about how best to work on recovering his memories over lunch.

Patton had thought they were on the same page, that being they were going to read through the pages in his files hoping he’d remember something in them. However, now he was doing that finger tapping thing on the table while he chewed slowly on his sandwich.

“What?” Patton finally asked.

Logan had clearly been waiting to share because there was no pause before his response. “Have you heard of Blight?” Logan asked, casually, as though that were not a name that made most of the population shudder when they heard it.

“This is nothing like that,” Patton said firmly before he continued with that line of thought.

“Why couldn’t it be?” he asked with a curious head tilt.

“Because… because it’s not,” Patton said.

“Do you have any evidence that it isn’t? Just because it was a device instead of a superpower does not mean it is not the same methodology.”

“It’s just not,” Patton said, “It can’t be.”

“Why?” Logan asked again.

“Because none of them recovered,” Patton tried not to snap.

Logan hummed. “Ah. That seems like an emotionally charged conclusion.”

“Can we please just not talk about it?” Patton implored, turning back to his lunch even though he wasn’t hungry anymore. There were a few moments of silence.

“Did you know,” Logan started, and Patton sighed, “that Blight was on record as having telekinesis before she revealed herself as a Mind Warper? People say she must have implanted false memories in her victims, but if she really was then it would be evidence of-”

“The Monofacultas Theory,” Patton finished for him.

Logan gave him a startled look. “You know it?”

“I’ve known you for over three years Logan and while I agree that the theory is interesting and feasible, there are no known cases of someone having a set of powers that span more than one of the Tri-divisions.”

“If Blight had telekinesis there is. She would have had a physical power as well as a mental one. Witnesses said…”

“She tore the minds of an entire city apart at the seams and restructured them to her desire. Excuse me if I don’t trust the validity of those mind’s statements especially when they have been disproved by video evidence.”

“Just because she didn’t use telekinesis for that one situation caught on video doesn’t mean she couldn’t.”

“Fine,” Patton said. “Say you’re right. Why does it matter?”

“Well I have telekinesis.”

“So, you want to… move your memories back into place?”

“Basically, yes.”

“With your telekinesis?”

“Well, brains are ultimately physical objects.”

“And you are going to not simply give yourself a stroke because…?” Logan shrugged. “Absolutely not Logan.”

“It would be interesting,” Logan said, eyes alight. “I could prove that powers are not truly divided into physical, metal, or energy powers but are originally one singular power that develops due to circumstance during early childhood.”

“If your brain doesn’t literally explode because you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“All science has risk.”

“No, Logan.”

He gave him the look that Patton was not allowed to call a pout.

“Can we at least try some less extreme methods of memory recovery before the theoretical methods with no hard evidence? Like continuing to read your files to try to jog your memory naturally as we had discussed.”

“Fine,” he agreed, looking downtrodden. Patton really hoped he got his memory back before he got too restless and tried something like that.

“If you’re finished eating, we should get back to reading,” Patton said. Patton was certainly finished with his lunch.

The afternoon went well without any major disasters or talk about dangerous methods to get memories back. Logan had not remembered anything, but he’d been calm and patiently started sorting through his files in chronological order. Then, when Patton left him alone for a moment to go to the bathroom, he somehow managed to find his daily planner from where Patton had hidden under a blanket in the front hall closet.

“It’s fine,” Patton insisted from the couch, watching him pace back and forth and wringing his hands. “I called your advisor and told him you wouldn’t be able to meet with him because you were sick.”

Logan frowned at him. “You shouldn’t’ have done that. I could have gone. I don’t want to appear irresponsible by skipping meetings.”

“He wanted to talk about your research. You would have had no idea what he was talking about,” Patton reasoned.

“I would have managed.”

“Logan,” Patton said patiently. “Your research area is partial differential equations. Do you even know what those are?”

Patton could tell by the look on his face that he had no idea. Yet he still stuck his nose up in the air. “I know what a differential is, and I know what an equation is. I am sure I can figure out how to do parts of them.”

“You haven’t even taken multivariate calculus.”

“It can’t be that hard.”

“It is,” Patton groaned, “It is hard.”

“Perhaps for you,” he said hotly.

“No,” Patton ground out. “For you. The 28-year-old you spends hours a week trying to understand these things and he has a bachelor’s degree and almost 6 years of graduate education under his belt. You are in high school.” Logan just gave him a withering glare and turned his attention back to the planner.

“I’m supposed to teach two courses tomorrow,” he said.

“Oh, absolutely not,” Patton said.

“I have a responsibility rather or not I have my memories.”

“Logan, listen to me. You have not graduated high school. You cannot teach a calculus class.”

Logan bristled. “I took calculus last year and got an A.”

Patton had to take a steadying breath. “That is not the same as teaching it.”

“It can’t be that hard. I will simply explain the information to them.”

“And when one of them asks you how to add two fractions?”

Logan’s eyebrows crinkled. “That is a basic skill. I am sure anyone in a college calculus course can do that easily.”

“You have clearly never taught a day in your life.”

Logan bristled. “Any adult who cannot add fractions should immediately be kicked out of university and returned to kindergarten where they belong.”

Patton looked at him for a moment hoping perhaps he would figure out on his own why what he just said was completely out of line. He just kept his jaw stubbornly firm. Patton took a breath. “And that is why you cannot go and teach these students.”

Logan scoffed. “I am not sure why my future self would put up with such things.”

“Because you almost failed your real analysis course,” Patton answered in a heartbeat. “Your first semester of teaching, you were also taking a first-year graduate real analysis course and you couldn’t understand a word of measure theory. It was the first time in your life that you had to work for a C. One day you looked at your students and came to the realization that the look on their faces when you tried to explain the product rule to them was likely the same expression your professor saw on yours when he tried to explain the existence of non-measurable sets. We all have our strengths and weaknesses and if we let someone else draw the line for stupid, there is every chance we’d end up on the wrong side of it. So,” Patton said crossing his arms, “I am not going to let you go ruin your own reputation with your students as a teacher who is not an asshole because you’ve not had to toe your own line yet.”

Logan met his eyes, clearly wanting to argue, but Patton just kept his face strict and his arms crossed. Logan’s face cleared suspiciously quickly, and he backed down. “Fine,” he agreed. “I will stay here.”

“Good,” Patton replied eyeing him. “Now put down the planner and let’s go back to work.”

Want to read more? Use the links below!

AO3 Part 9

My Masterpost 

#sanders sides #logan sanders #patton sanders #logicality #tsss #superhero au #memory loss #past child abuse #past child neglect #emotional suppression #self deprecation #gaps in his files #labeled universe #relabeled; refiled #adriana writes

[firelord-frowny]

Here’s a violin/classical musician thing imma complain about. 

There’s this one very prominent and very phenomenal ~young~ violinist named Nancy Zhou. She’s only like 28ish, I believe, but the accuracy and versatility of her technique is just???? Out of this world. Like, there are a lot of players who are amazing, but they’re mostly only amazing in One Way. Like, they have a style that they tend to stick to because That Way is the best way they know how to deliver a consistently great performance. They have a certain way they like to approach different techniques like staccato, spiccato, left hand pizz, double stops, shifts, blah blah, and if they tried to use a different method, it wouldn’t necessarily be as confident or as pristine. 

Nancy Zhou, on the other hand, may have her preferences, but she’s totally capable of executing one technique in TONS of different ways, and then she’s able to pick and choose, mix and match, and experiment to her heart’s content. 

She’s able to do this, I think, because she has an uncanny ~instinct~ about noticing, deciphering, and explaining the mechanics/physics of any technique right down to it’s tiniest details, and she has extensive knowledge about the pedagogical theroies and methods that a person must understand in order to actually put their intellectual understanding of technique to practical use. 

So, she posts almost every day on instagram a short clip from her practice sessions from that day, along with a lil write-up explaining what her goal was for that practice session, how she endeavored to accomplish it, and an analysis of the physical mechanics of what she’s trying to do. She’ll discuss how she’s experimenting with tempo, or the speed of a certain shift, or the flow of vibrato from one row to the next, blah blah blah. She’s hella academic about it, but it’s clearly a profoundly artistic thing that she’s doing. Basically, her impeccable technique is a paintbrush that she uses to bring her unique musical visions to life. 

Every note and every bow stroke is pristine in terms of rhythm and intonation, and in terms of interpretation and technique, everything she plays is exactly the way she wants to be played. 

AND YET!!!!!

On almost all her videos, there are a bunch of comments from a bunch of boring know-nothing mediocre violinists saying shit like “your tempo is too fast.” “your bow is too close to the fingerboard.” “your vibrato is too narrow.” blah blah fucking blah. And they’ll even very often go so far as to spout all these bullshit ~scholarly sources~ that ~prove~ that This Piece should be played no faster than 73bpm, or That Excerpt is meant to be played in 1st position, or Those Dynamics are not intended by the composer to be so dramatic, whatever whatever. 

And every time, when she does bother to reply, her reply is basically a seeringly polite “fuck you” in which she ~thanks them for their insight~ and tells them that she has done her own studies on the matter and has used the knowledge she’s gathered to inform the development of her own interpretation. 

And honestly like. 

That’s that shit that I think differentiates an actual artist from somebody who just studies artists while posessing very little artistic talent of their own. 

There are a LOT of ~classical music~ scholars who are obsessively committed to trying to ~recreate what the composer wanted.~ They try to discover the exact tempo Bach had in mind, they try to figure out what a crescendo sounded like in Beethoven’s head, they want to adhere to every single custom and convention that is thought to have been ~the norm~ of any particular musical era. When a piece is known to have been written for a specific violinist, they want that piece to be played exactly how that violinist would have played it EVEN IF THERE ARE LITERALLY NO RECORDINGS OF THEM PLAYING IT????? 

And when somebody deviates in any moderate-to-significant way from those customs and approximations, they think it’s “wrong.” 

But literally, like. 

If the Bach chaccone was only meant to be played One Way, what is the point of more than one person having ever played it?? 

If there’s an ~exact~ interpretation that is The Only Correct Interpretation, why should anyone listen to This Performer over That Performer when they both sound the exact same?? 

Performing something in a way that no one else performs it is the actual point of performance. Every player who’s worth a damn wants to give their audience something that can only be gotten from them, specifically. It’s the question: What does this player have to offer that can’t be found anywhere else?? 

I just??? Really fucking hate all these stuffy, boring, pretentious, passionless lil assholes who want to snuff out all the melodrama that classical music was meant to express. 

[t4tlawlight]

It's funny how reading/watching Death Note can make you pro-abolition but the writer is such a bootlicker. He said that the Death Note ruined Light's life and that, without it, Light would have become one of the greatest police leaders in the world. He completely forgot that his character was already an embittered 60yo trapped in the body of a teen with power issues. Like. Light wouldn't have ended up happy and good w/o intervention and personal growth.

god i KNOWWWWW. it REALLY shows wrt the fact that in htr13 they call L and light both evil (in L’s case “slightly” evil) and that the only character that he thinks is heroic is Soichiro, who is just walking talking copaganda.

ALSO i talk about this at length but i think its really interesting that L is portrayed as morally bankrupt and like. the task force frequently questions his methods... but L’s methods are ripped straight out of the Japanese police’s playbook. i have a few sources for this that i go back to repeatedly (LINK 1) (LINK 2) (LINK 3) (tws for police violence & detainment, torture incl. food & water restriction, discussion of bodily functions and also repeated full-body searches) but here’s a section from the academic article (with all of those TWs):

Imagine for the next few moments that you have just been arrested by the police as a suspect for a criminal offense. You have been taken to the police station where you will remain for the next twenty-three days without a formal criminal charge filed against you. During your incarceration you will be subjected to relentless interrogation periods which last for over ten hours a day, and run late into the evening hours. These interrogation periods have been designed to coerce a confession from you, whether you have actually committed the crime or not. Interrogation techniques may include the bartering of "privileges" such as water, food or bathroom visits; other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; or perhaps even violence. During this time, if you are fortunate, you will be permitted to meet with an attorney, for two fifteen-minute visits.

this is just straight up a list of things L does in Death Note lol. Literally if L were written by a more competent author he (and the task force by extension) would make for a very good analysis of Japan’s prison system (just like how light’s issues are born from similar issues), except for the fact that L comes across like a rogue agent that the task force are consistently shocked by, to the point that L is singled out as a human rights violator constantly for Fandom Jokes (tm) when in reality the task force would be just as bad as him. Also all of the kiras. Everyone major in Death Note is a human rights violator. 

Also matsuda shoots light a shitload of times with, like, intent to murder and faces no repercussions for it which is. one of many other examples of the bootlicking...

#ask #death note #police violence // #police brutality // #torture ment // #Anonymous #thoughts

[agirlunderarock]

How I accidentally wrote 20 page paper on Boromir for one of my Final Ever University Papers PART 2

So this took me 5ever because I had to go through my actual paper again to find the sources and the citations I had, and then throw out the academic fluffer I had to speak with. But anyway just be prepared for a long ass read because we gotta touch on nearly every source I argued with in this post before getting to the good stuff. If you haven’t read Part 1 well here it is

Okay Okay where was I?

I said that academics were wrong with how they were judging Boromir right? Is that where I left off? Well thats where I’m starting

So before I go further I need to explain that the main premise for my paper is an argument to characterize Boromir with loyalty and fear, instead of power hungry and whatever the hell used, and then throw out this good vs. evil binary that’s often used to describe the lord of the rings- because lets be real, it looks like that on the surface but everyone has their ups and downs at least once or twice, and if not within the Lord of the Rings, it comes from books that are set in previous ages. 

ANYWAY

Keep the fear and loyalty things in mind alright?

Fear sounds like an odd choice for a character I’m supposed to be defending right? I know.

We’ll get to that just bear with me. 

So in order to say that academics were wrong, I first had to look at where they were coming from and try to see what textual evidence they had. Because if you’ve done academic research, you know how important textual evidence is. 

So while finding literally nothing that focused specifically on Boromir, I found  J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia : Scholarship and Critical Assessment by Michael D. C. Drout, which I still have questions about but hey it was a good starting point. You would think that a whole Encyclopedia dedicated to Tolkien would have more than a handful of entries dedicated to Boromir. I mean mentioning him in Gondorian politics or relations with Rohan or even Boromir I instead of just Boromir II but heres the thing, IN THE WHOLE IN ENCYCLOPEDIA HE WAS ONLY MENTIONED 8 TIMES.

THE NAME BOROMIR (which in this document only refers to Boromir II) ONLY APPEARS IN EIGHT ENTRIES.

You know what those entries are? 

‘double of,’ - okay what the fuck does that mean?

 I honestly don’t remember what it means I think it had to do with character foils, you know like how Neville is a foil for Harry in Harry Potter? If I remember correctly, it identified the common foils, Gandalf v. Saruman, Frodo v. Gollum and Aragorn v. Boromir. I could be totally wrong about this, its been exactly a year and I didn’t focus on this entry.

 ‘Faramir and,’- yes we know Boromir is Faramir’s older brother. What else ya got?

 ‘herosim of,’- Ah yes sounds promising

And you think it would shed some positive light on our boy right? RIGHT? Heres what the entry said per the quote in paper “It is in fact Boromir’s desire for the victory of Minas Tirith and his own glory there in that motivates his own grasp for the ring: the heroic motivations of fame, reward, and revenge (in this case on Sauron)” ( Drout 270 ).  

LIKE EXCUSE ME WHAT THE FUCK- sorry wait, let me show you how I rephrased that for academic purposes:  This description does not actually describe Boromir as being heroic, but later explains why these descriptions of heroism are actually evil compared to characters like Aragorn, Frodo, Gimli and the rest of the Fellowship.

 ‘penance of,’- Yet another character who achieves redemption through death. Great. I hate it. Shut up. Kill this trope.

 and finally,  ‘tyranny of.’- yes because Boromir was obviously a tyrant, but I say again SHOW ME TEXTUAL EVIDENCE

AND I’M TALKING ONLY ABOUT THE BOOKS HERE REMEMBER ALL OF THIS IS INFORMATION ON THE BOOKS. like there were entries on things from the movies, and even fanfiction, but THESE ENTRIES WERE BUILT ON RESOURCES THAT BUILT ARGUMENTS ABOUT THE BOOKS

I’m getting off track here

SO 

ANYWAYS

At the end of each of those entries were list of sources that the author used to create those entries. So guess what that meant- Ya girl was hand delivered sources to search for and hopefully they had some specific pages references for me to look up within the actual book series. At least you would think thats what I found, but NOOOOOOOOO, what I actually found is that EVERY SINGLE REFERENCED SOURCE CHARACTERIZED BOROMIR ONLY BY HIS ATTEMPT TO TAKE THE RING FROM FRODO.

Thats like living your whole life and having people who say they know you intimately (not in the romantic sense in the knows you to your core sense) BUT the only thing they really know about you is that one time in pre-school you tried to draw a rocket on the wall but actually it looked like a penis thats the only thing anyone will remember you for. I didn’t do this by the way, nor know anyone who did this but some kid somewhere probably did

But you know me at this point I had to check the sources and see what they were saying. So I took up Patrick Grant’s  “Tolkien: Archetype and Word,” where he talks mostly about Frodo. I know its a stretch BUT he talks about loyalty specifically Sam’s loyalty to Frodo, and remember we want to establish that Boromir is incredibly loyal, so we have to see what he’s actually up against according to the critics

“…Sam Gamgee, whose part is least publicly acclaimed of all, but who in the sense in which we are now using the word, is especially heroic. His unfailing devotion to Frodo is exemplary, and here again Sam is a key link in bring the meaning of the book to the reader, the everyman who admires great deeds but wonders what his own part might be in important events which seem well enough wrought without him” ( 180 ).  

Okay that seems fair from how Tolkien himself has talked about Sam right. And you’re probably like okay, but what the fuck does that have to do with Boromir? Literally just further down the page  he says:

“…. The fellowship breaks only when the bond of obedience is broken, as it is by Boromir, whose pride and lust for personal power are evidence of false heroism” (180).

LUST FOR PERSONAL POWER???? PRIDE?????

SHOW ME THE PAGES SIR

GIVE THEM TO ME

I know you’re probably thinking, ‘but wait he’s actually kinda right-”

WRONG

Its anxiety, I’m telling you

I counted 

its fear and anxiety

but again I’m getting a head of myself. Basically Grant just took a shat on Boromir to make Sam look good.

EXCUSE ME SIR SAM IS A GODDAMN MASTERPIECE ON HIS OWN THANKS. DON’T TRASH BOROMIR TO COMPLIMENT SAM. Also be wary of people who do this in general, if they put someone else down instead of just out right complimenting you take it as a warning

Oh and did I mention that because Grant says Boromir is technically being selfish, another critics analysis makes Boromir Evil, because acts done out of selfish pursuits are seen as evil and a “perversion of human will.” But you know, thats just how it be sometimes when you’re putting literature in conversation with one another.

Just know I pick on Grant a lot, mostly because he says shit like this:  “…the most blinding love derives directly from such obedience,” (180). when it comes to Sam, and then takes a shit on Boromir. Like we’re going to come back to the obedience thing in a little bit, but just know that Merry, Pippin, Faramir, Eowyn, Even Sam at one point, and I mean I guess by some extension movie!Arwen take a big ‘ol shit on the idea that the only way to be heroic is to be OBEDIENT.

I get it, its another Catholic thing. I’m Catholic, I know what its getting at. But consider- no

Basically I boil this shit down to one thing

Sam Only Owes Loyalty To Frodo.

Literally his main concern throughout the book is Frodo and then the Shire and what that encompasses. So yeah its easy to be loyal and obedient to someone who shares all the same ideas and values as you and has a pretty similar lived experience right??? ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY And before anyone says Sam was loyal to the fellowship, Sam would literally cut a bitch for Frodo. He woulda fought Aragorn in the Prancing Pony if he thought he had to. He gave a second thought to Merry and Pippin when they left the Fellowship, but it wasn’t a “we should go back for them all or wait for them” It was “i’m gonna support mr. Frodo, even if Idon’t much like the gollum creature he decided to drag around but fair i guess cuz none of us know the fucking way into Mordor.” 

So I made a chart to demonstrate why comparing Boromir and Sam is a big no no, and what kinda things Boromir was working with the whole time he was part of the fellowship.

Did I forget to mention that this was supposed to be a visual research paper?

So Sam and Frodo had a lot of the same Fears and values.

Our Boy Boromir over here has to deal with being a political/military figure, meet the demands of his father, he’s gotta try to be a good brother, he’s gotta learn to get along with the fellowship, and then each of those new or old loyalties has different responsibility and expectations he’s supposed to meet. And because I had to include Aristotelian ideas as part of the class, to quote myself: Despite the Aristotelian concept that it is impossible to be a virtuous friend to many, Boromir’s actions throughout The Fellowship of the Ring show him attempting to do this ( Aristotle 9 ). Like thats literally why he ends up a member of the Fellowship, he’s a little unsure of this plan, but hey its the best one he’s heard and if everyone thinks its going to work then by golly he’ll see it done. But again Aristotle (just in your head pronounce it like chipotle for me please) wants to try to establish a structure that I think is stoopid, he’s got a thing that says  “it is a more terrible thing to defraud a comrade than a fellow-citizen, more terrible not to help a brother than a stranger, and more terrible to wound a father than any one else” (15). 

So remember those loyalties in the little blue squiggles up in the picture, we already know that Denethor, and Faramir bump heads a little, and then the soldiers serving with Boromir probably have their own ideas about how Gondor should be defended, and then he goes to the Council of Elrong and they’re saying something completely different from what he’s heard- theres a lot of threads pulling the Captain in different directions. He’s got a lot hats to wear and demands to fulfill and living under the shadow of Mordor with all of those responsibilities is bound to give anyone anxiety. 

But don’t just take my word for it

The movie actually reinforces this. I know the book says Boromir was “...pierced with many black feathered arrows” But the movie specifically makes it 3

Now I’m sure Mr. Peter Jackson didn’t intend for what I’m about to say, but I think its a pretty cool notion to think about. Because you can summarize Boromir’s conflicting loyalties into “family’ ‘country’ and “Fellowship’. Like his father would have him bring the ring to Gondor, his role as a military/political figure for Gondor means he should be doing whatever he has to in order to protect his country, and the Fellowship is like nah man we destroy this thing and everything else will fall into place, and Boromir is left having to decide whih of these things to act upon. Family, Country, and the Fellowship are the competing signs that make up is character arc, and his grapple with these three things is ultimately what leads to his death.

Now if your thinking family and country should be lumped together- theres a reason for it, just trust me, bare with me please

But basically what I’m trying to get at is given all these factors, you can’t compare a character like Boromir with all these responsibilities hanging off him to be comparable to Sam whose only responsibility is Frodo. 

But you know who does share all these same demands

Faramir

Like take a look at their character arcs- if you can the text on this next pic is super teeny

If thats too small for you don’t worry about it because we’re gonna get into why Faramir is a better foil for Boromir, and how this should affect the way we as the reader come to understand his character. So fun stuff in the next part! Sorry for dragging this out, but just like my original paper, this turned out to be WAY longer than I expected. 

#The Lord of the Rings #Boromir #me talking about Boromir #the fellowship of the ring #character analysis #character development

[idkwhoiamanymorebutwtf]

talking about Disaster made me remember the flashback in "Rerun" where Gumball details what happened, "but it wasn't my fault". With this half disbelief, since *of course* everything bad that happens is usually *his fault*

Honestly Gumball is the Scapegoat of the family. (funnily enough the term is often used in family dynamic’s specifically including very controlling mother’s.)

I think in the family, Gumball very much has a role very similar to a Scapegoat child’s. I mean, look at this description of a Scapegoat’s role. “Lost sweaters and keys, lateness, broken objects and rules—every crack in the veneer of family life that the controlling parent needs to be perfect—are pinned on the scapegoated child”. I’ve noticed throughout the show when something goes wrong it’s his fault. When the kids do something bad it’s on him. If Richard pranks Gumball and Gumball pranks him back, guess who gets scolded? If eight cars crash unexpectedly into you with nobody at the wheel, guess who’s to blame? When your t w o sons are late to turn in a dvd, who’s name do you immediately yell at when you get home? It’s always Gumball. Even when multiple people are in trouble he’s the one who gets the brunt of it. He’s the first person anyone looks at, even if he’s not the only one. With Gumball, the smallest discrepancies are blown out of proportion. 

One article I read used this as an example of a child being a scapegoat “Let’s say the family car gets vandalized in the driveway. A reasonably well-adjusted person is irritated, but figures this was the work of random thugs. Not so the controller, who discovers that when Nancy came home, she didn’t leave the porch light on. Voila! She’s an instant scapegoat as the parent focuses on the cover of darkness without which the thugs wouldn’t have acted. Yes, the vandalism becomes Nancy’s “fault” in this particular household.” and I couldn’t help but laugh because blaming a child for your car being vandalized because they didn’t leave on the porch light, is strikingly similar to blaming a child for your car being wrecked by eight driverless cars randomly hitting you because the kid was messing with the windows.

In some families the role of Scapegoat rotates from person to person based on the situation, however in other families (as with the Watterson’s) it stays on one person. And giving one child the role of the Scapegoat let’s the other family members feel like they’re better people than they are. They don’t have to take responsibility for the issues they cause, instead having a convenient person to put it all on. The one flaw in their ‘perfect’ family is the Scapegoat child and therefore whatever goes wrong must be that child’s fault, which leads to the idea that if that child could just be “made to act better” then life would be perfect, causing resentment towards that child for not being better, even though the kid isn’t any worse than any other member of the family. This is very clearly the dynamic this family has. Think about it. Darwin is great. He doesn’t do anything wrong. He’s the sweet innocent baby. Any time that angel of a child does anything wrong it’s because he’s with his brother and is being dragged down. And Anais is so responsible and grown up! She doesn’t do bad things, even if she did we wouldn’t know about it. Both of them can never really be in the wrong, at least not exclusively. The blame is always at least partially on Gumball, and more often then not it’s on him exclusively. 

In these sorts of dynamics, when the parent in the situation blows up in a way unprompted by the situation, nobody looks twice at it, instead being annoyed at the Scapegoat for messing everything up. Much like in the scene where Gumball was blamed for their car being hit and everyone just rolled their eyes and groaned at him like it really was his fault and Nicole wasn’t blaming him for something that wasn’t his fault. 

An article I was reading states “bullying and targeting the scapegoat is consciously maintained. With a narcissistic mother, it often becomes a team sport with the other children following her lead.“ and doesn’t it? How many times had Gumball been insulted by his siblings? Called a bad person, called dumb, called whatever bad thing? I honestly think his mother built this image of him in their heads where he’s a dull, selfish, ill mannered boy and nothing more, a child who she loved but who was nothing special. And his siblings followed in her lead. And he has a very hard time actually liking himself as a result, because he believes every word of it. Once again an article I read backs this view of the family dynamic up, describing a possible outcome of Scapegoated children. “they may have so internalized the negative messages about themselves that they set their sights low, avoid failure at all costs”, it describes, and as established in multiple episodes (such as The Triangle) Gumball literally refuses to try to be better because he doesn’t think he’s capable. I’ve spoken many times on his fear of failure. 

“Because the mother sees her children as extensions of herself (except for the rejected scapegoat)” is another thing I saw. And I have a whole analysis on how this woman projects her success onto two kids and completely lacks faith in the third. Other children in this family dynamic often work so hard to stay in the good graces of their parents that they end up seriously damaged. They may burn themselves out working so hard or become desperate for the smallest approval or even begin to think themselves better than other’s, just like I think Anais’ poor social skills are due to her spending most of her time trying to be the best she can be academically to secure her mother’s interest, and her tendency to act as if she’s better than her brother’s, come from that dynamic. Just like I think Darwin’s desperation to be well behaved and good comes from his need for approval and to be better than his brother, who is the Scapegoat of the family.

So yeah, overall I think Gumball is blamed for too much and it’s to the point where he kinda believes it himself.

[canchewread]

Editor's note: while I've certainly been away from Can't You Read for quite a while, anyone who follows my work at ninaillingworth.com or my Patreon blog already knows that I've been writing (and podcasting) again. You can check out some of my latest essays here, here and here; to listen to the podcast I co-host with Nick Galea (No Fugazi) just click here.

Today however I'm back on my bookworm bullsh*t with another curiously dated review of left wing literature from my extensive library of pinko pontification. In today's review, we're going to be taking a look at “The Chapo Guide to Revolution: a Manifesto Against Logic, Facts and Reason” written by five members of the popular left wing podcast “Chapo Trap House” - specifically, Felix Beiderman, Matt Christman, Brendan James, Will Menaker and Virgil Texas.

Baby Steps up the Ramparts

It is I will theorize, utterly impossible to write a review about the Chapo Trap House book without engaging in the extremely online, three-sided culture war that has sprung up around both “the Chapos” themselves and the enormously popular podcast they host. In light of the fact that seemingly everyone on the internet who detests the show regard the Chapos as slovenly crackpot losers born on third base and podcasting from mom's basement, it really is alarming how much digital ink has been spilled about the various types of “threat” to all that is good and holy this simple irony-infused podcast supposedly represents. While I intend to largely sidestep that discussion by focusing entirely on the book and not the podcast (which I don't listen to regularly, to be honest with you), I accept that virtually nobody reading this is going to be happy unless I do something to address the elephant in the room, so here goes:

Neera Tanden and her winged neoliberal monkeys can eat sh*t, but extremely online leftists have a point that the Chapos themselves occasionally skirt the line between mockingly ironic reactionary thought and just plain old reactionary thought; although this is not particularly alarming to me because they're Americans and America itself is a breeding ground for reactionary ideas – decolonizing your mind is a process and I'm pretty sure it's one I myself am also engaging in still every single day of my life at this point. Importantly, in my opinion this failing does not make them cryptofascists so much as the product of American affluence; I'm having a hard time understanding how teaching Marx and Zinn to Twitter reply guys serves the fascist agenda in any meaningful way. While I obviously can't pretend to know another person's heart, in my opinion the Chapo boys are definitely leftists but they're obviously not labor class and yes it's a little hard to explain away the group's loose affiliation with the (objectively strasserist) Red Scare podcast through co-host Amber A'Lee Frost - but I'm not going to waste a couple thousand words trying to untangle Brooklyn independent media drama from half a country away and besides, Amber didn’t write this book. Despite these critiques however, I think it's important to note that under no circumstances am I prepared to accept the argument that with fascists to the right of me, and lanyards, um also to the right, the real problem here is... Chapo Trap House.

Ok, with that out of the way let's dive right in and talk about the question I think most folks who've written about The Chapo Guide to Revolution have largely failed to grasp – namely, what kind of book is it precisely? Combining elements of comedy, playful online trolling, historical analysis, political theory and good old-fashioned cross platform promotional marketing, the book has often lead critics to compare it to catch-all comedic efforts like Joe Stewart's “America” or even humorous men’s lifestyle advice texts like “Max Headroom's Guide to Life.” This is I think an essential misreading of the fundamentally earnest and direct tone the book actually takes in its efforts to reach a fledgling audience growing more receptive to left wing ideas. The Chapo Guide to Revolution is, as the cover says, a manifesto; but rather than serving as the mission statement for a particular formed political ideology, the Chapos have written an extremely effective, entry-level argument for why labor-class millennials should be leftists – and, of course, why they should listen to Chapo Trap House; this is still a cross-promotional work after all.

Naturally as befits a book about a comedy podcast, albeit a very political one, the Chapo Guide to Revolution is an extremely funny book that does a remarkable job translating the type of caustic online humor previously only found in left wing Twitter circles, onto the written page. While its certainly true that this quirky style of comedy can be a little difficult to grasp for the uninitiated, and typically a cross-promotional work of this type will get bogged down in self-referential humor and inside jokes, the book mostly avoids this trap by sticking with the basics and assuming that the reader has literally never heard an episode of Chapo Trap House, which in turn makes the humor fairly universal and extremely accessible – at least for anyone under the age of fifty. This endeavor is greatly aided by the dark and dystopian, yet hilariously eviscerating art of Eli Valley; a man who himself has since become one of the leading left wing critics of establishment power online through his extremely provocative sketches and ink work.

The truth however is that if the Chapo Guide to Revolution was merely just a funny book, I wouldn't be reviewing it here today. No, the reason this book is worth writing about at all lies in the fact that underneath all the jokes, taunts and “half-baked Marxism” lies an objectively brilliant work of historical analysis, cultural critique and left wing political theory – albeit an unfocused theory that borrows heavily from half a dozen functionally incompatible left wing thinkers and literary giants, but a fundamentally serious work of political philosophy nonetheless.

Yes, that's correct; I said brilliant. Where think-tank minions and neoliberal swine in the corporate media see a petulant pinko tantrum, and  online leftist academics see privileged dudebros appropriating Marx (poorly), I see a brilliant and yet stealthy synthesis of political theories, historical analysis and organizational ideas originally presented by writers like Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky and Thomas Frank. Drawing on historical theories from Marx, Gramsci and Rocker, the Chapos have cobbled together a rudimentary political philosophy that represents a crude and yet promising welding of anarchist concepts about labor, Marxist concepts about economics and democratic socialist concepts about politics, collected together under the generic banner of “socialism.”

At this point some of you are undoubtedly snickering, but please bear with me for a moment here because what the Chapos (or their ghostwriter) have done in this book is truly a marvelous thing to behold precisely because you can't see it unless you're paying close attention. By positioning The Chapo Guide to Revolution as both a comedic work and an introductory level text, the authors have created a sort of unique crash course in left wing history, geopolitics, philosophy and political theory for a newly awakened generation of Americans who find themselves increasingly politicized whether they like it or not.

Underneath the acerbic millennial humor, “extremely online” diction and unrelenting waves of sarcasm, The Chapo Guide to Revolution is also a surprisingly accurate “CliffsNotes” style textbook presentation of multiple broad-based social science subjects – here are just a few examples:

In “Chapter One: World” the book presents a rudimentary and yet deliciously insightful history of post-World War II American empire that draws on authors like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, with a touch of contemporary writers like Greg Grandin and Naomi Klein. In particular the attention devoted to condensing the target audience's formative experiences with empire like the War on Terror, the invasion of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan, into a short and coherent narrative that can be easily shared with other novice political observers makes this book an invaluable resource for budding millennial leftists  Additionally, while it certainly might have been an accident, the Chapos' choice to wrap this “Pig Empire geopolitics for newbs” lesson in a protracted joke about America as an extremely ruthless corporate startup at least touches on ideas presented by writers like Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Sheldon Wollin (or Chris Hedges repeating Sheldon Wolin), Joel Bakan, Rosa Luxemburg and others.

In Chapters Two and Three, entitled “Libs” and “Cons” respectively, the authors conduct a remarkably thorough political science lesson on the two major mainstream political “ideologies” in American culture, including both a rough outline of their history and their modern calcification inside the Democratic and Republican parties. Of course both of these sections rely heavily on the personal experiences of the authors growing up in a politicized America, but these discussions also dip into the works of Thomas Frank and Cory Robin to explore and critique the liberal and conservative political mindset respectively; in particular the Chapos summary of Robin's work on the conservative worship of hierarchies is an inspired distillation. More importantly however, the Chapos also expose the way in which these two ideologies represent a false dichotomy within the greater confines of a larger capitalist socioeconomic order; which is of course a (still absolutely correct) idea straight out of the works of Karl Marx.

In Chapter Six, appropriately entitled “work” the authors engaged in a disarmingly earnest discussion about wage slavery, the false promises of the protestant work ethic and the history of terrible jobs available to the labor class under various iterations of the capitalist project. This is followed by a humorous, but dystopian review of what future jobs might look like if the neoliberal socioeconomic order continues on as it has so far, and an extremely brief but sincerely argued pitch for completely transforming the role of work in society through some from of technologically assisted anarcho-communism. This last idea is admittedly a little half-baked but you have to admire their balls when the Chapo boys flatly call for a three hour workday; a position that will undoubtedly be popular with the labor class who're currently engaged in all those sh*tty jobs the book describes earlier in the chapter. Once again this synthesis of left wing ideas about work does represent a new and unique formulation, but despite the humorous and original content you can also clearly see the influence of anarchist writers like Kropotkin, Rocker and Goldman in this chapter, as well as contemporary authors like David Graeber and Mark Blyth.

Unfortunately, if there is a downside to writing a brilliantly subversive comedy book that functions as a “my little lefty politics primer” for politically awakening millennials, it's that you simply don't have the space for an intellectually rigorous examination of all the ideas you're sharing – there is after all a big difference between reading the Cliff Notes version of Zinn, Chomsky or Marx, and reading the original theories in their full form. Furthermore, the individual life experiences, idiosyncrasies and humor styles of the authors do at times bleed into the text in a way that I personally suspect was detrimental to the overall analysis. Here's a short list of “sour notes” I found in this otherwise remarkable book:

From what I have listened to of the Chapo Trap House podcast, it has always been my impression that the Chapos were particularly effective critics of American corporate media, so I was a little disappointed that the chapter on media in The Chapo Guide to Revolution was a fairly tepid and narrow discussion about (admittedly vapid) bloggers turned celebrated pundits. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure power dunking on the likes of Matty Yglesias, Meagan McArdell and Andrew Sullivan was viscerally satisfying for the book's target audience, but there's really not much of a broader critique of the media's ideological role in American capitalism and culture here like one would find in Herman & Chomsky's “Manufacturing Consent”, Matt Taibbi's “Hate Inc” or Michael Parenti's “Inventing Reality.” This absence I fear has the tragic side effect of reinforcing the idea the American corporate media sucks because egg-shaped moron bougie pundits are bad at their job and not because of the inherent failings of the for-profit media model and the institution's true role as an ideological shepherd keeping the masses aligned with the goals of elite capital and the ruling classes – almost exclusively against the bests interests of the labor class.  

The introduction is written in what I can only assume is a sarcastic imitation of right-leaning self improvement books with a touch of Tyler Durden's Fight Club ethos thrown in; this might have been a better choice in a completely different book but it's largely out of place with the rest of this book. At this point I should also say that the best part about the Kidzone intermission is that it was only two pages long. Needless to say, neither one of these sections did anything for me whatsoever.

While it's entirely possible that at forty-three years of age, I'm simply too old to really get the “millenialness” of the chapter on Culture, the simple truth is that I found most of it to be a fairly useless examination of pop culture influences the Chapos hold in reasonably high esteem. As someone who isn't particularly engaged in watching lengthy television series or regularly playing video games, I really couldn't dig into most of the material presented and the less said about the art jokes and the bizarre absurdist discussion of elevator brands, the better. There is however one rather notable exception here in the brief essay on The Sorkin Mindset, which is an objectively brilliant evisceration of the liberal obsession with the West Wing and the tragic effect that obsession has had on Democratic Party politics – this really could have gone in the chapter on “Libs” because it's that valuable of a tool for understanding and critiquing the modern liberal lanyard worldview. Finally I guess I should note that while the Chapo boys' insightful critique of the vapid “prestige TV” phenomenon is both interesting and correct, it really only “matters” if you're a consumer of these types of series – and I'm not.

While I certainly understand the authors' decision to use their notes section to preemptively debunk bullsh*t complaints about the more outrageous accusations they level against the American establishment, I would have liked to see a “recommended reading” section. It is very clear that the Chapos have a reasonably strong background in imperial history, political science and labor theory and I feel like pointing readers towards writers who expand on the theories they summarize in The Chapo Guide to Revolution might have been a better use of space than printing links to old internet articles bad faith actors will never type into a search engine anyway.

Although it might seem like there was more about the book I didn't like, than I did, this is a little misleading – the first three chapters of The Chapo Guide to Revolution are pure fire and comprise over half of the volume. If you throw in the brilliant chapter about work and labor theory, the overall package is far more substance than style, despite the fact that it remains humorous and a little bit edgy throughout the book. While it's certainly fair to say that an introductory primer on why you should be a leftist for newly-politicized millennials isn't a must-read for everyone, the simple truth is that the vast majority of online leftists I know could learn a thing or two from this rudimentary synthesis of various left wing ideas into the seeds of a working, modern political ideology compatible with a uniquely Americanized, millennial left.

While no three hundred page comedy book written by five podcasters from Brooklyn is going to teach you everything there is to know about socialism and left wing ideology, there's something to be said for offering an accessible, entry-level alternative tailor-made for a target demographic already being heavily recruited by the fascists. As a starting point for exploring left wing political thought, you could do a lot worse than The Chapo Guide to Revolution and for a generation of kids who've mostly been encouraged to be passive accomplices to their own subjugation while blaming their misery on anyone even more powerless than they are, there is perhaps nothing more valuable than a condensed narrative that explores how to even think about another way to live.

Remarkably, this book finds a way to deliver on that monumental task while simultaneously failing to grasp one single relevant thing about the cherished American novel Moby Dick. Despite this infuriating literary myopia and insolence, this still might literally be the best book ever written for young American leftists who simply aren't going to spend ten years reading academic literature written by dead white guys from Germany and Russia. - nina illingworth Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online! You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog Updates available on Twitter, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud. Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

#chapo trap house #book review #The Chapo Guide to Revolution #left wing politics #geopolitics #humor #leftism #introduction to leftism #Noam Chomsky #Howard Zinn #Thomas Frank #Cory Robin #culture war #politics #news #media #bloggers #savage burns

[olderthannetfic]

I just realized it’s Fandom First Friday and the topic is meta!

For months, I’ve been slowly working my way through How To Be Gay by David Halperin, which talks about drag queens and how certain aspects of gay male culture appropriate from women to empower gay men. (Halperin uses the word ‘appropriate’ extensively, not necessarily in a negative context.) He brought up some points I thought were highly relevant for thinking about slash.

Last February, I went to Escapade and chatted with a bunch of acafans. To my total lack of surprise, they too love Halperin’s book and had the same reaction I did. I thought when I finish the book, I’ll write up some meta. But I got busy, and it’s a long, dense book. So then in August, I went to the final Vividcon. There, I ran into Francesca Coppa and mentioned this idea. Her response? “Oh, I just wrote a journal article about that.”

…

AHAHAHAHA! Oh god, we are the same person.

(NB: We are not actually the same person.We just have similar first names, similar fandoms, and similar flists back on LJ, have done similar fandom history oral history projects, go to the same cons, and have both been on the OTW board. Laura Hale once went so far as to “out” me as her. And now we like the same academic books too. Heh.)

So, obviously, now I have to write meta about this, and Fandom First Friday is the perfect time to take a stab at it. I have so much more to say and I want to go back through How to be Gay and pull out many more amazing quotes, but better to write something than wait for perfection.

What I found the most interesting about Halperin’s analysis was that he points out that women may find these funhouse mirror versions of femaleness upsetting, and those feelings are completely understandable and valid, but they don’t make drag any less empowering or significant for gay men. He neither thinks that we need to get rid of drag nor that women should stop having those reactions.

He also talks about how subtext is often more appealing than text: when he first started teaching his college course ‘How to be Gay’, on which the book is based, he assumed that students would connect more with literal representation of their identities. That’s the narrative we push: now that we have literal X on TV or in a Broadway show, we don’t need subtextual old Y anymore! Instead, many of his students loved things like The Golden Girls and failed to connect with current gay representation.

It’s a long book, but what many of his ideas boil down to is that a Broadway show that is massively subtextually queer allows the viewer to identify with any of the characters or with all of them simultaneously or with the situation in general. It’s highly fluid. Gay representation often means a couple of specific gay characters with a rigid identity. Emotionally, that can be harder to connect to.

Sometimes, allegory gets closer to one’s own internal experiences than literal depiction does.

Coppa’s article (book chapter?) is about exactly that. It’s titled: Slash/Drag: Appropriation and Visibility in the Age of Hamilton. She uses Halperin’s book but extends the idea further. I particularly liked her example of how female fans use Bucky to tell stories that are essentially (and often literally) about rape. His story is about a loss of bodily autonomy and about having one’s boundaries violated in a way that is familiar to female fans, but he’s a male action hero, so those stories don’t have the same visceral ick factor as writing about literal rape of literal women.

Partly, that’s due to how society treats men vs. women, but it’s also about which fans are writing these stories and which fans are the target audience of them. Just as a cis gay man appropriating Joan Crawford to talk about his experience of gayness isn’t really for or about women, most slash fanfic about Bucky being victimized isn’t really for or about cis gay men.

It was on the dancefloor at Vividcon that I realized that, as a woman, I have this unconscious feeling like I am appropriating gay men’s culture when I’m into Joan Crawford and other over-the-top female performers. It’s ridiculous! How can I be appropriating a female celebrity from gay men? But it’s an experience I share with lots of other women. Telling women we have no right to things is the bedrock of our culture.

That feature film Slash, which featured a bunch of cis male slash writers was inspired partly by the male director going on Reddit and finding a bunch of gay guys saying that slash squicks them. He felt that he was being progressive by erasing women.

On Tumblr, the fujocourse gets reblogged not just by toxic pits of misogynist, delusional bullshit like thewoesofyaoi, but also by seemingly reasonable fans. Hell, I’m pretty sure I used to suffer from this problem myself: I remember a time when I felt like I, as a bisexual woman, liked slash better, differently, and more correctly than straight women did.

I no longer feel this way.

There are lots of reasons for caring about slash, some of which are just about the pretty, some of which are more about gender, and some of which are more about sexual orientation, but after seeing decades of arguments about who is allowed to like slash, I have come to the conclusion that none of them are valid. All of them are “Not like the other girls!” and hating on femaleness. Some of the fans who do this are female and some are not, but it all boils down to not feeling like women have a right to a voice.

And then there’s Halperin calmly asserting gay men’s right to self-expression!

It struck me like a bolt of lightning because it was so self-assured. He never doubts that there’s something valid and important about giving gay men space to explore their own emotional landscapes. Literal representation is important, sure, but so is the ability to make art that speaks to your insides, not just your outside, and that sometimes means allegorical, subtextual art played out in bodies unlike your own.

“Fetishization” a la Tumblr often means writing stories with explicit sex or liking ships because they’re hot. Sometimes, it means writing kinks that are seen as dark or unusual. Frankly, this sort of fujocourse boils down to thinking that sex and desire are dirty and that m/m sex is the dirtiest of all. I do write some ~dark~ kinks in my fic because, for one thing, I’m a kinky person in real life, and for another, I often use fic to explore the experience of having dark thoughts and wondering what that says about me.

A lot of slash writers are exploring feelings of victimization. Another big chunk of us explore things like rape fantasies from the bottom: maybe we have and maybe we haven’t experienced assault in real life, but for all of us, having that kind of rape fantasy brings up questions of whether we’re asking for it, whether it’s okay to be into that kind of thing, whether it means something. Another chunk of us are exploring a different kind of “bad” thoughts: feelings of aggression, violence, dominance. In my own work, I’m interested in sadists and how they come to terms with their desires, but I think slash is also often a way to explore any sort of violent, dark feeling, not just rape fantasies from the top. Society tells us women aren’t allowed to have dark thoughts–hell, that we’re not capable of impulses that dark. Sometimes, it’s easier to write even a relatively banal action story about a male action hero because he, in canon, is allowed to have the feelings and impulses that interest the writer.

The fujocourse is all about saying that women aren’t allowed to have dark impulses ever. That we’re not allowed to be horny. That we’re not allowed to enjoy art for the sake of an orgasm. When we depict people not precisely like ourselves, we’re overstepping. When we make art for our own pleasure instead of devoting our lives to service, we are toxic and bad. Any time. Every time.

It’s just another round of saying that women’s pleasure is not valid and women’s personal space should not be respected. No hobbies for you: only motherhood.

And yet that’s not actually what most slash fans think. I was heartened to read Lucy Neville’s Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys: Women and Gay Male Pornography and Erotica. A friend read it recently and was trying to guess which quotes were from me. I have to admit, I was playing that game too! I honestly couldn’t tell, until I looked at demographic info, that some could not have been mine. They sounded so familiar. On Tumblr, I tend to wade into meta discussions, so I see a lot of loud, divisive views. I especially see a lot of views that, over time, make me start to wonder if I’m a crazy outlier. Intellectually, I know that this is all down to bad curation of my dash and a love of browsing the meta tags. I didn’t realize how much it had crept up on me unconsciously–how much I had started to feel like I had to justify and explain the most basic and common experiences of being a slash fan.

What was interesting about Neville’s book is how alike many of the women sounded. Now, no one book represents everybody, and she makes no claims to have figured out the exact size or demographic breakdown of fandom. Her focus is on women who like m/m material, whether slash or porno movies or anything else. At the same time, though, she surveyed heaps of women, and the responses were amazingly similar. Nearly every quote in that book strikes a chord with me. Nearly all of them, with a few minor variations, could be something I’ve written. Gay, straight, bi, asexual: we all had many of the same things to say about slash and what it means to us.

So, some brief, and more digestible thoughts:

Slash is “overrepresented” in meta and scholarly literature because people still ask us to justify ourselves constantly.

People ask us to justify ourselves because they assume that “good representation” is literal representation.

There are key emotional, psychological aspects of our experiences that are often better expressed allegorically, whether we’re gay men doing drag or women writing slash or any other sort of artist.

Here are some choice quotes from Coppa. (I will restrain myself and not just try to quote the entire thing. Heh.)

“There are endless transmedia adaptations of characters like Sherlock Holmes or Batman, so it is clearly not appropriation that’s the issue: it is the appropriation by the other—by women, in this case.

One could argue then that it is our awareness of this appropriative doubleness—of the familiar characters acting in an unfamiliar script, of the female storyteller animating the male characters— that boots slash out of “literature,” with its illusions of psychological coherence (see Edwards’s Chapter 3 in this volume), and puts it instead into the category of performance, itself so often associated with the fake, the female, the forged, the queer. My argument in this chapter is that it might be useful to compare slash to other forms of appropriative performance; drag comes powerfully to mind and, more recently, the musical Hamilton. These are forms where it’s important to see the bothness, the overlaid and blurred realities: male body/Liza Minnelli; person of color/George Washington.”

“In his book How to Be Gay, David Halperin (2012) discusses the ongoing centrality of certain female characters to the gay male cultural experience and takes as his project an explanation of why gay men choose those particular avatars and what they make of them. Halperin argues that gay men use these female characters to articulate a gay male subjectivity which precedes and may in important ways be separate from a gay male sexual identity (or to put it another way, a boy may love show tunes before he loves men, or without ever loving men). The gay male appropriation of and perfor- mance of femininity effectively mirror—in the sense both of “reflect” and “reverse”—slash fiction’s preoccupations with and appropriations of certain (often hyper‐performatively) male characters in service of a female sensibility; in both cases, appropriation becomes a way of saying something that could not otherwise easily be said.”

“A character like Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne speaks, obviously, to boys who are getting mixed messages about what successful manhood looks like in the twenty‐first century—it was hard enough in the old days to be Charles Atlas, but today you have to be Charles Atlas and Steve Jobs at the same time, which is a problem of time commitment just for a start. But these characters speak to women, too: differently. The doubled nature of the paired male characters taken up by slash fandom—these aliens, these costumed heroes, these men wearing man suits, men in male drag—make them appealing sites of identification for women, or proxy identities, to use Halperin’s (2012) term; that is, they provide “a metaphor, an image, a role” (185). They are sites of complex feeling.

But what these characters are metaphors for, what they make us feel, is not simple, singular, or easily reducible. Halperin takes hundreds of pages even to begin to excavate the complicated web of meanings around Joan Crawford; I am not going to be able to unpack any of these iconic male characters in a few paragraphs, and it is also the nature of fandom to build multiple and contradictory meanings around fan favorites (and to get into heated arguments over them).”

[In Halperin’s class] “Works that allowed gay men to be invisible were preferred to those where they were explicitly represented. “Non‐gay cultural forms offer gay men a way of escaping from their particular, personal queerness into total, global queerness,” Halperin (2012) writes. “In the place of an identity, they promise a world” (112). I would argue that slash offers something similar—that queer female space, as well as the ability to escape the outline of the identity that you are forced to carry every day—and that for gay men and slash fans both, the suggestion that you would restrict your identification to those characters with whom you share an identity feels limiting.”

“Visibility is a trap,” Phelan (2003) concludes, referencing Lacan (1978) (93): “it summons surveillance and the law, it provokes voyeurism, fetishism, the colonialist/imperial appetite for possession”—and fans on the ground know this and talk about it in very nearly this language. Again, this is not to say that fans—or gay men, for that matter—do not want or deserve good representations: female fandom, slash fandom included, championed Mad Max: Fury Road, Marvel’s Jessica Jones, and the new, gender‐swapped Ghostbusters, all of which have multiple and complex female characters. Rather, I am arguing that representation does not substitute for the pleasure or power of invisibility; for, as even the most famously visible actors say, “But what I really want is to direct.”

#fandom meta #fandom first friday #fujocourse