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goldsasa · 1 year

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Dear Sirs!

(or have some ladies also signed?)

A few days ago, you, Mr Musk, together with Mr Wozniak, Mr Mostaque and other signatories, published an open letter demanding a compulsory pause of at least six months for the development of the most powerful AI models worldwide.

This is the only way to ensure that the AI models contribute to the welfare of all humanity, you claim. As a small part of the whole of humanity, I would like to thank you very much for wanting to protect me. How kind! 🙏🏻

Allow me to make a few comments and ask a few questions in this context:

My first question that immediately came to mind:

Where was your open letter when research for the purpose of warfare started and weapon systems based on AI were developed, leading to unpredictable and uncontrollable conflicts?

AI-based threats have already been used in wars for some time, e.g. in the Ukraine war and Turkey. Speaking of the US, they are upgrading their MQ-9 combat drones with AI and have already used them to kill in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The victims of these attacks - don't they count as humanity threatened by AI?

I am confused! Please explain to me, when did the (general) welfare of humanity exist, which is now threatened and needs to be protected by you? I mean the good of humanity - outside your "super rich white old nerds Silicon Valley" filter bubble? And I have one more question:

Where was your open letter when Facebook's algorithms led to the spread of hate speech and misinformation about the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar?

Didn't the right to human welfare also apply to this population group? Why do you continue to remain silent on the inaction and non-transparent algorithms of Meta and Mr Zuckerberg? Why do you continue to allow hatred and agitation in the social media, which (at least initially) belonged to you without exception?

My further doubt relates to your person and your biography itself, dear Mr Musk.

You, known as a wealthy man with Asperger's syndrome and a penchant for interplanetary affairs, have commendably repeatedly expressed concern about the potentially destructive effects of AI robots in the past. I thank you for trying to save me from such a future. It really is a horrible idea!

And yet, Mr Musk, you yourself were not considered one of the great AI developers of Silicon Valley for a long time.

Your commitment to the field of artificial intelligence was initially rather poor. Your Tesla Autopilot is a remarkable AI software, but it was developed for a rather niche market.

I assume that you, Mr Musk, wanted to change that when you bought 73.5 million of Twitter's shares for almost $2.9 billion in April?

After all, to be able to play along with the AI development of the giants, you lacked one thing above all: access to a broad-based AI that is not limited to specific applications, as well as a comprehensive data set.

The way to access such a dataset was to own a large social network that collects information about the consumption patterns, leisure activities and communication patterns of its users, including their social interactions and political preferences.

Such collections about the behaviour of the rest of humanity are popular in your circles, aren't they?

By buying Twitter stock, you can give your undoubtedly fine AI professionals access to a valuable treasure trove of data and establish yourself as one of Silicon Valley's leading AI players.

Congratulations on your stock purchase and I hope my data is in good hands with you.

Speaking of your professionals, I'm interested to know why your employees have to work so hard when you are so concerned about the well-being of people?

I'm also surprised that after the pandemic your staff were no longer allowed to work in their home offices. Is working at home also detrimental to the well-being of humanity?

In the meantime, you have taken the Twitter platform off the stock market.

It was never about money for you, right? No, you're not like that. I believe you!

But maybe it was about data? These are often referred to as the "oil of our time". The data of a social network is like the ticket to be one of the most important AI developers in the AI market of the future.

At this point, I would like to thank you for releasing parts of Twitter's code for algorithmic timeline control as open source. Thanks to this transparency, I now also know that the Twitter algorithm has a preference for your Elon Musk posts. What an enrichment of my knowledge horizon!

And now, barely a year later, this is happening: OpenAi, a hitherto comparatively small company in which you have only been active as a donor and advisor since your exit in 2018, not only has enormous sources of money, but also the AI gamechanger par excellence - Chat GPT. And virtually overnight becomes one of the most important players in the race for the digital future. It was rumoured that your exit at the time was with the intention that they would take over the business? Is that true at all?

After all I have said, I am sure you understand why I have these questions for you, don't you?

I would like to know what a successful future looks like in your opinion? I'm afraid I'm not one of those people who can afford a $100,000 ticket to join you in colonising Mars. I will probably stay on Earth.

So far I have heard little, actually nothing, about your investments in climate projects and the preservation of the Earth.

That is why I ask you, as an advocate of all humanity, to work for the preservation of the Earth - with all the means at your disposal, that would certainly help.

If you don't want to do that, I would very much appreciate it if you would simply stop worrying about us, the rest of humanity. Perhaps we can manage to protect the world from marauding robots and a powerful artificial intelligence without you, your ambitions and your friends?

I have always been interested in people. That's why I studied social sciences and why today I ask people what they long for. Maybe I'm naive, but I think it's a good idea to ask the people themselves what they want before advocating for them.

The rest of the world - that is, the 99,9 percent - who are not billionaires like you, also have visions!

With the respect you deserve,

Susanne Gold

(just one of the remaining 99% percent whose welfare you care about).

#elon musk #open letter #artificial intelligence #chatgpt #science #society #democracy #climate breakdown #space #planet earth #siliconvalley #genocide #war and peace #ai algorithms

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cbedfordart · 8 months

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Hey! I’ve been following you for a while and I really love your art, it’s absolutely stunning and I love the way you paint and capture anatomy. I know this is a bit of a broad question but I was wondering if you had any tips on getting better at painting digitally and studying anatomy, maybe more specifically blending, colour picking, and structuring anatomy in a way that looks somewhat realistic?

Thanks and I'm glad you enjoy my work long enough to be following me for this long! I definitely love drawing a naked body that's for sure haha. In terms of tips for getting better there's a few things I can mention but it's going to fall broadly in the general answer of "study", because this is the most sure fire way to be able to understand what it is you're trying to emulate in your art. There are different ways to study, and they teach something slightly different. For example, doing studies from life (live drawing classes) help me understand movement in a way studying from a photograph cant, simply because you're seeing the same model in different poses in real time, you can see how the fat and muscle moves around as they shift to different positions. So they're not technically moving the whole time, but you're still seeing some movement there, and understanding what sticks to what while it rotates and bends. Studying from photographs can help give you time to do some real deep dives and investigate where different bones/muscles sit while someone is in a particular position. There's also the opportunity for understanding how shadows may be formed by the body as typically photographers are more conscious of how the subject may be lit than what may be available in a live drawing class. Beware though, as more things are photoshopped than you realise, not all photos represent reality. Especially glam and fashion photos. It doesn't mean its bad to want to have these effects on your work but just be conscious they might not always be anatomy accurate if that's what you're striving for. I sometimes make a conscious decision to go against what is anatomically correct for a certain effect myself. A book I have been recommending for years for anatomy is Dr. Paul RIcher's "Artistic Anatomy". It's great for understanding muscle structure intimately - it's designed specifically for artists, but with the idea of trying to stylise the diagrams as little as possible for the sake of understanding the human form. There's a lot of great info and detail in here, but beware, there is not a lot of variety in body structure (at least not in the edition I have which is missing female anatomy I think already so I'm not sure what else I don't have in here). So you'll be able to understand function a lot from here but you wont be able to learn a lot about fatter body types sadly.

Colour picking is probably the most difficult for me to explain easily, as I have spent a long time winging it, then studying it, then being really experimental with it. I could write a lot a lot about this but to spare making this post any longer I'll refer to another fun book just for getting started on some frequent and common terms called "Color and Light" by James Gurney.

I also love that he uses like, dinosaurs for everything in here lol. It's a great starting point that can give you some go to ideas that you can then experiment from there. It's not very authoritarian (or at least that's what I feel), and doesn't push anything forward as a hard and fast rule, just showing what affects some colour combinations might instil in someone.

As a whole, I've gotten better at painting digitally by studying traditional painting techniques. They theories are basically transferrable one to one with some few exceptions. I tend to blend my colours by simply using a soft round brush in Photoshop with a low opacity. Much the same way I would with a real canvas, with a large round brush and diluted colour. I hope this answers your questions in some way. I tried to be not too specific only because this answer would be at least another 30k words lol because this is something i think a lot about! I love technique! If I ever stream again, feel free to pop in and ask more questions where I might be able to show some stuff in real time! Not sure when that will happen though!

Also the way i do stuff isn't a "correct" way either. I like painting from imagination so this is how I make that work. Some people like to only work with references for every piece, and that is a completely legit way to create stunning art as well. Good luck!

#asks

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literary-illuminati · 10 months

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Book Review 32 – Weavers, Scribes and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East by Amanda Podany

This was my second real (published by a university press, has ~100 pages of citations and bibliography at the back) history book I’ve read this year. Which I think probably explains why it took me about as long to read as the other 7 books this month put together. Which is the opposite of a complaint, just to be absolutely clear. I’ve kind of missed chewing through a history book that would double as a decent self-defence aid in a pinch.

The title explains the book well enough – this is a broad survey history of the ancient near east. Specifically, it’s a history of civilizations that recorded their records and correspondences and stories in cuneiform on clay tablets. So the narrative begins with Uruk in Sumeria, follows it through the spread of city-states throughout Mesopotamia, expands its view to include Syria, the Levant and regions of Anatolia (and to a much lesser extent Egypt) and the western Iranian plateau in the late bronze age, and keeps that frame through the iron age until reaching the Achaemenid conquests and the decline of cuneiform in favour of writing in Aramaic on paper or parchment.

Part of that is just arbitrary because you need to pick some outer borders of what your book is about, but it’s also a fact that writing everything down on (often baked, either purposefully or because they got caught in a fire) clay tablets was a truly incredible gift to future historians. Paper and parchment and cloths decays away over the course of a historical eyeblink, whereas we still have legal contracts and bureaucratic records from literally four thousand years ago that were recorded on fired clay. Combined with some incredible archaeological luck, and we can see stretches of late bronze age history in higher definition than very nearly anything until, like, the Early Modern Period.

The necessary condition of that is obviously that these cuneiform-writing civilizations actually wrote enough down for written records to really let us understand their societies. Which did very over time, and is definitely overwhelmingly biased towards the great institutions and upper classes, but actually does seem to have been true! Podany all but dedicated the book Mesopotamia’s scribal class, and they got everywhere. And the change over time in just what’s written about - the spread of written records and letters from temples and palaces to the private homes, the spread in literacy from an arcane art only trained scribes would understand to something every halfway prominent merchant would be expected to grasp the basics of for record-keeping – is illuminating enough about how these societies evolved on its own.

Aside from all the waxing poetic about clay tablets, the book does try quite hard to be an approachable historical survey. To that end, basically every chapter is split into a few different sections, each pocket biographies of individuals (or, occasionally, pieces of architecture) that we have enough visibility of to make them a useful entry point to illustrating some broader aspect or society or important process they lived through. The vast majority of them aren’t great kings or conquerors, either – scribes, merchants, weavers, farmers, priestesses, and even the occasional slave get pride of place. On balance, the book tries to be a social history, getting across how people actually lived (or Podany’s best guess of it, though she’s quite explicit about what the actual evidence we have for every given biography is and when she’s speculating) is favoured over the exact sequence of battles and kings.

I’ve mentioned it before, but prior to reading this my only real familiarity with the ancient Near East (and specifically with the development of pristine states in Mesopotamia) was from Scott’s Against the Grain. Which adds a slight sense of whiplash to the entire first third or so of this book, honestly; as opposed to Scott, Podany actually seems sympathetic to the position that civilization was a good idea. Part of that is just that she takes the actual emergence of the first city-states as a given (instead of something approaching original sin), but the book very clearly portrays the growth of a literary culture, monumental architecture, specialized labour, grand and impressive rituals and festivals, institutionalized long-distance trade, and so on as interesting and impressive things worth studying and appreciating. It’s a book about a project of state-based urban-agrarian civilization, as told through its archaeological remnants and literary corpus, and as a whole it portrays that project as admirable and sympathetic. The book doesn’t brush over slavery or warfare, but they’re not especially focused on, either. Famine and plague actually are pretty much brushed over or at least portrayed as irregular calamities. A lot of the book’s wordcount is spent sketching out lives that seem at least slightly familiar to a modern reader, and making the Mesopotamian world seem like a place you could live a happy life in. Quite a contrast to Scott’s constellation of slave societies held together by brute force and exemplary terror, forever raiding the hinterland to abduct new workers to make up the losses from constant disease outbreaks and always on the verge of collapse.

Well, that’s all only mostly true. Podany’s sympathies for pristine states and bronze age empires does not extend to the iron-age Assyrian Empire. Her disdain for their whole imperial project is pretty clear through those chapters, and from her telling they (especially during what’s called the Neo-Assyrian Empire) were responsible for a lot of the brutal innovations that are now such core parts of imperialism. The mass deportation of conquered populations to settle and work other provinces, using exemplary terror to cow subjects, and royal legitimacy established nearly entirely through glorious victories in warfare and exulting in the same. (Along with less objectionable but still important practices like appointing regional governors from the centre.)

The book makes a real point of keeping a balance between men and women in who it focuses on. This is, I get the feeling, kind of just a matter of wanting to show off that we have a historical record that actually includes women in it as more than accessories and footnotes to men for this period (unlike, say, Classical Athens), But Podany’s clearly made a secondary goal of the book to try and push back on the whole image of a primordial and unchanging ultra-patriarchal order across all of history. So there’s a lot of attention paid to how the role of women in public life changed over time, and the sort of political and economic power elite women could wield. Which was actually quite a bit, as it turned out! Obviously nowhere in the ancient world was anything like a feminist utopia (and as a general trend, seems to have grown more patriarchal over time), but compared to a lot of periods I know more about, the available space for women in public life is quite a bit larger; on the upper extreme, queens and priestesses managed and controlled massive estates in their own right, and on the lower we’ve got plenty of bureaucratic records showing women in various prestigious or managerial roles. Always paid significantly less than men doing the same of course, but still a far sight from being totally cloistered or official ideologies saying women are soulless or incapable of rational thought!

Speaking of priestesses – Podany goes into great detail trying to describe Mesopotamian religion and the place religion had in the ancient near east. Which again changes over time – in the early dynastic period the great temples seem to have been the core organizing institutions of economic and social life, but two thousand years latter they were still rich and important, but relatively speaking much less central – but is basically always incredibly important. The endowment of high priestesses and the creation of some public work then given over as the property of an important gods were common themes of year names across the region’s kingdoms, and by all accounts pretty key legitimizing activities. The idea that the gods would sanctify oaths and punish anyone who broke them was likewise a pretty core part of Mesopotamian systems of justice. The book’s a bit vague on how the actual theology and practice of religion over time, but there’s plenty of lovely, evocative descriptions of rituals and festivals, and of the architecture of temples and design of the statue-avatars that were considered to be literal bodies of the divine.

The book’s also very interested in forms of government – both day to day systems of contracts and justice and land allocation, and the high politics of royal courts and governance. Though there’s unsurprisingly quite a bit more available on the latter than the former. Still, it’s pretty fascinating to the degree that the whole ‘absolute tyrant bronze age god-king’ was...well, not not a thing, but very much an occasional aberration. The growth of centralized royal authority was a real trend over a lot of the period, but especially in the beginning arrangements that seem pretty close to what we’d call a constitutional monarchy, with power shared with councils of notables, really do seem to have predominated. Special shouout to Ashur, which before it became a militaristic empire in the late Bronze Age was actually a prosperous trading city where the king was in large part a ritual/religious figure and the balance of executive power seems to have been held by an official who was elected by the city’s merchant class for annual terms.

I’ve done a poor job getting it across in this review, but the book does an amazing job really confronting you with the sheer depth of history – bronze age kingdoms and city-states were the dominant political institutions of the near-east for millennia. The period covered by the book is literally nearly as long as the period between the end of the book and the present. It’s enough to give you a sense of vertigo.

Anyway, absolutely incredible book, that I’m very happy to have read. Now I need to go find a decent one on Achaemenid Persia.

#book review #history #weavers scribes and kings #amanda podany

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polyamorousmood · 7 months

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How do people handle when a partner says something along the lines of...oh, what, I'm not enough? I don't feel like the notion of polyamory is about anybody not being enough. But not quite sure how to articulate that in a helpful way to reassure another person. Thoughts?

There is no in-the-moment fix to this that I've found.

That is a big concern that requires a lot of work to address. Your partner has to have an open mind, and you have a lot of explaining to do. It's a process, and you'll probably have to explain it several different ways, several different times for it to sink in.

I would caution against directly saying "you are enough" because... your partner alone won't satiate you, in one way or another. If they could, you likely wouldn't be trying/doing/asking for poly stuff (in such a mono-centric world as we live in). But I'd also be likely to bet no ONE person would satisfy you either.

Here's as good a place as any to put the very necessary read-more. There's specifics and stuff below the cut

Okay, I'm having a hard time organizing what I'm trying to get across as flowing prose so we're just doing bullet points of general advice. You know your life better than I do though so these are not hard-and-fast rules so much as consider-this-es.

🔍Find the specific worries your partner has. Without judgement work with your partner to get to the heart(s) of the issue. Are there any precise worries your partner has? When you go out to eat, your partner isn't scared their cooking isn't to your standards. So what ways are they actually worried about being "not enough for you." Sexually inadequate is a common fear, but so is the fear that they're not providing enough for you emotionally or materially, they might worry you're discontent because your hobbies don't overlap enough, or a thousand other things. There's likely general anxiety there as well, but know as much as you can about what worries your partner has.

👇Be specific with your reassurance. As discussed, saying "you are enough" is too easy to ✌️"disprove"✌️ (these are air quotes). But that's in part because its too broad. Any one thing you prefer to do with someone else can serve as "proof" the partner in question "isn't enough." So focus on what you value about your partner, what you get out of that specific relationship, what is special and un-replicatable that you enjoy. "I will always want to do [activity] with you" and "I love your way of seeing the world. When we were talking about [subject] you mentioned [interesting point]. I never would have considered that. I want to keep hearing your insight" and "I NEVER thought I'd like [whatever], but the way you love it makes me love it". You should also (if applicable, do not lie) probably assure your partner you are still committed to a long term relationship with them, including working through problems together.

🤝Help your partner build security in the relationship. Have dedicated time that's just for them Even if you're living together so everything you do is "together", make quality time. Those specific reassurances? Write them down on fancy paper and give them to your partner, so they can refer back to it when they need to. Thank your partner for coming to you with concerns, even when you're not sure what the fix is. In your daily routine you should be telling your partner things you're grateful for about them.

🧍Help your partner feel confident as an individual. The worst way to transition a relationship to polyamory is to go straight from spending every minute together to seeing other people. Perhaps counter-intuitively, you need to have separate lives, preferably before you add other people to the mix. You should spend at least a couple hours a week with friends or on hobbies away from your partner and vice versa. If you're everything to your partner, the fear of not keeping you is the fear of losing EVERYTHING, so your partner needs to see they have value outside of the relationship. And that WILL make a good relationship STRONGER, and less dependent.

⏲️Take time to work through problems.Don't let stuff fester. If you notice your partner is feeling off, say so in as many words. If they aren't ready to talk, its still helpful for them to know you notice and care about their feelings. If they do want to talk, talk. Even if you don't know how to proceed, take real time to sit together and brainstorm. If you don't reach a possible solution, establish a time to revisit it. Don't. let stuff. fester.

💭Know what you mean. "I don't feel like the notion of polyamory is about anybody not being enough" okay, what is it about? What's the draw for you? For me, whose very kitchen table, its about freedom and trust, sure, but its also very much about exploring new things and sharing that experience with my partner. I feel our love is stronger when it is not bogged down by petty mortal notions of exclusivity.

📘📗📙📕Explain your needs multiple different ways. Find several metaphors that describe how you feel. "My favorite meal cannot be my breakfast, lunch, and dinner." "It doesn't feel different to me than friends. You're my best friend but I wouldn't say no to hanging out with a work friend for my best friend's sake." "The sun is beautiful, I cannot live without it, but its also really important I get to see the stars". "I can't do monogamy. I tried really hard in the past, but it felt like cutting off a limb. I wasn't wholly myself, I could still feel phantom sensations of what wasn't. It drove me mad" Whatever you feel suits the situation. Be prepared to go into detail, be prepared to explain the shortcomings of your metaphor, and be aware of what negative associations your metaphors my have (for example, the food metaphor listed here may be misinterpreted as "so you're sick of me"). Make it personal.

🙋Its not you, its me. but like fr. DO NOT use that wording, but emphasize that your wants and feelings and needs are not caused by your partner. They are yours (and you're asking your partner to help you meet those wants/feelings/needs by allowing you some poly freedom).

📑Further reading. I talk about how to communicate effectively here. Here's a little workbook about "jealousy" but I think it also applies to in/security so it may be helpful for your partner to do independently or with you. Some explanations as to how your partner might be hurt by you having other partners. And lastly, I haven't read Polysecure (yet!) but uhhh, gonna go out on a limb here and say might be applicable (my library has a copy! so you might check yours if you don't want to purchase). And last but certainly not least, though again, nominally about jealousy, I think this article really suits your situation and offers some reframings your partner may find helpful.

As a final word of advice: hear your partner out. Your goal, ultimately is not to change your partner's mind, but to reach an understanding. You both will have to work toward understanding each other for there to be any hope of success.

#ask box is always open #jealousy #insecurity #feeling insecure #poly relationship advice #now to do some finger stretches to keep the carpal tunnel away cause oo boy that was a lot of typing

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wings-of-ink · 5 days

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If i could ask, imthe MC's bidy type descriptions seem to be rather slender based. Idk if its just cause of the descriptions, or if its cuase it aint translating into my brain well, but i wont lie when saying i was hoping to have a bit more of a chunky MC. But then again its also completely your story so i aint gonna make any demands or nothin. Just meaning to ask if there was like, a description for the body types withint thw story.

That may just be a fumble on my part with the wording and interpretation. One thing having an audience has taught me is that the way we all see the world and interpret things can be very different, and some things I am simply out of the loop on, lol.

I personally don't intend or see them being slender unless we're referencing the specific ones that mention lean or slender (with the athletic type also being more lean). My intent was that broad/sturdy, curvy, and voluptuous also includes MCs that are chunky in some manor. I didn't necessarily want to give an MC body option that was just "chunky," "thick," "heavy set," etc...when that's not all their body may be or the specific way a body can be these things. There were many ways I debated on to do this without having a list that was just too long.

The trick for the MC is finding enough descriptors without going overboard, but staying generalized enough that you can headcanon the look of your MC to a more specific extent (say, thick thighs or butt, heavy in the middle, double chin - whatever you please). Though that is my intent, interpretation is going to vary. I intentionally try to avoid specifics in certain areas so readers can write part of this story and world into their own minds.

MC appearance is one of those things that I want to be as organic as possible, but with regard that - due to the 2nd person perspective - it doesn't get naturally mentioned that often. With MCs of all shapes and sizes and colors, it's hard for me to cast that wide net and still keep things reasonable. It is something I will try to improve as I go, though.

Thank you for the ask, Anon! I appreciate your insight! I hope I was able to explain my intentions in a way that makes sense. If you have additional thoughts or questions, please let me know! ^_^

#god cursed if #asks #twine if #if wip #twine wip #interactive novel #if game #interactive fiction #gc if character development

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allthecanadianpolitics · 9 months

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Hi! :D Let me just first say that I love your blog! It's been really helpful in all kinds of ways. Second, I'm a recent-ish immigrant to Canada and I'm trying to learn about Canadian history and present political, social, economic systems. About the lives of marginalized communities and the systems behind them, past and present feminist movements, First Nations history and current resistance, the economic system that shapes Canadian lives but also its place in the ongoing exploitation of the global south etc. But so many of the resources I run into that tackle these topics from a leftist perspective seem to be mostly American-centric in their focus. Of course, there is a massive overlap in there because of the history of the U.S. and Canada, I understand and expect that, but I still want to learn about these systems from within the current Canadian context flowing outwards, not the other way around. Does that make sense? Understanding the specifics of Canadian systems, my place in them, and how I can move from within that context towards social change is my priority right now. I'm sure resources centering Canada by Canadian authors from every background and community exist, I'm just having a hard time finding them because a) I suck at research T_T, and b) the internet, or at least my corner of the internet, seems to be very American-centric and everything gets filtered through that lens. I know this is a whole lot to just dump on someone but if you could recommend to me a few books (or other type of deep-dive resources) to get me on the right track I'd appreciate it immensely!

And thanks for all that you do!

You're welcome. I'm glad you've found this blog helpful and informative.

These are old resources, but here's some basic stuff I've posted about Canadian Politics and how the Canadian Political System works here:

You're also welcome to ask me any specific question you have and I'll do my best to answer it. Its very difficult to give specific answers to such broad topics that you've mentioned.

I also tag everything on this blog: https://allthecanadianpolitics.tumblr.com/tagged/ Add any topic of your interest after the tagged/ part of that URL. Anything from First Nations to the names of politicians will have dozens if not hundreds of posts about it.

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straightfromthetorturedpoetsdept · 2 months

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No why do you think folkmore are her worst albums????

Okay, so when I say folkmore are her worst albums, I am speaking in terms of replayability and taylor-ness. I do not mean the quality of the albums themselves are bad, I just find that I never seek out folkmore to listen to if I'm trying to listen taylor swift. I find folkmore to be albums that you need to be in a very, very, very specific mood for. I also find that folkmore was kind of like her attempt to be taken seriously musically and I just really enjoy glitter gel pen taylor and I find that while she can write critically acclaimed "serious" music, taylor shines the best when she is using simple imagery to paint a very, very vivid picture of complicated emotions.

I think what makes taylor so awesome in terms of songwriting is how accessible her songs are. She really understands how to use simple language to make you feel a specific way and I find folkmore to be too flowery. In short, folkmore feels like she was trying too hard to be a serious 30 year old popstar and it kind of shows in the type of music she wrote for those records.

Since folkmore, Taylor has received this reputation of her songs being high-brow, complicated lyrics and that has never been her MO. Ironically, it's always why I get angry at the idiots who call tortured poets a cringey title because the way taylor's music is set-up works exactly like poetry. The best poems have lines that, if isolated, are regular ass sentences but put together, the poet has managed to make you view such sentences in a different light.

Despite how much people overuse the phrase "14 year old girl poetry," I find that folkmore is more accurate to that than any other of taylor's albums because the connotation of 14 year old girl poetry being bad comes from how hard children try to make their work be taken seriously and thus, overusing purple prose and metaphors to make themselves sound smarter. In reality, good poetry is simple at its core. It understands how to convey a message in a language that appeals to a broad audience and doesn't hide behind sat vocabulary to make its point because it doesn't need to.

Let me stop it here because I could rant for ages about how much I hate the overworship of folkmore because they really are mid taylor albums imo. But if you want me to explain in greater detail, I will. Hope this answered your question.

#personal #taylor swift #folkmore

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raayllum · 1 year

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Literary analysis, by its very nature, is subjective. This is a false dichotomy and you know it.

Hi, literally got my degree in literary analysis and now teach/tutor in it for a Living, maybe it didn't click for you the first time but there is 100% a difference between "I'm evaluating something entirely on how it makes me feel" (which is entirely subjective) VS "I'm critically analyzing how a piece of fiction is put together and works regardless of how it makes me feel" which is subjective in its interpretations, yes, but there is an objective ground work that exists for every piece of Art or Literature (the "ur textual" foundation if you will, which yes, "ur text" is the term, it does sound very silly) that provides the basis for analysis in the first place.

If nothing about an artistic interpretation, even reading/watching the work itself as a process, is objective than no art can be analyzed in the first place. It was one of the first things we talked about in my narrative theory analysis courses

The example I always go back to is my experience in reading "1984" when I was in high school. Hated that fucking book. I hated all the main characters, I was rooting for them to get captured and tortured just so the book would end, I have no plans to ever read it again, etc. It was one of the best books I've ever read and I am infinitely grateful that I did read it bc 1) I learned a lot, 2) it has a lot of interesting discussions on the nature of language itself (which makes me think of "Fugitive Pieces" by Anne Michaels, which is also excellent) and 3) it's a fucking good, not enjoyable, book.

It's like I said in my own more recent posts and in others about leaving biases at the door to engage with what a story is actually Trying to Do. I'm staunchly against monarchy. If I brought my "we should abolish the monarchy" stance into TDP (when many kings and queens are also characters of colour for once) that would mean I'm focusing on how I think the story should be and dragging it for not doing what I believe and/or expect, rather than engaging with what the story Actually wants to say about monarchy, government, and leadership.

It's also just dumb to expect every story to explore a theme in the same manner every time? I explain it to my students a lot in terms of broad theme, like Love, but what matters is the specificity, i.e. Love as a theme in "Midsummer Night's Dream" vs "Romeo and Juliet" have overlap, 100%, but ultimately their thematic stance on Love is what determines the tonal and thematic culminations of their very different genres and explorations of a similar theme

As I said in my big post, if someone actually wants to critique S4 on a structural level and show me, beat-for-beat, how that structure is vastly different than the other seasons in execution, I'd be very interesting in reading it. I love that sort of thing and I like to think through all the angles. But thus far it doesn't exist and I think it would be a very hard meta to write, simply because there is more structural evidence for similarities than differences. Something can be very good while being structurally weak (hi Frozen) or something can be very bad/boring while being structurally sound. But because responses tend to be more subjective than analyzing structure, I prefer to work in analyzing structure. I never would've made it through my courses with books that were emotionally hard to read, like "Things Fall Apart" or "Wuthering Heights" otherwise. Preferring to work in structural analysis is my personal bias, of course, but that doesn't mean my structural analysis itself (i.e. Ezran being a peace maker for Callum and Rayla in 1x06 and 4x06) is biased, because that parallel is just a fact

Once again, pointing to:

Saying “this wasn’t worth the wait” is an emotional complaint. Which is also fine! But it’s entirely subjective. It’s saying your enjoyment of the season (a story that is separate as a concept out of time) is dependent on the time you spent waiting for it, something that means nothing to the story’s structure, because it was never built to take that into account from a Plot standpoint, never mind a narrative one

Dunno what's so hard to stomach about that, but your attitude is certainly sour

#thanks for asking #or not #me: i'm gonna talk about s4 in a calm and rational manner #anon: um Actually #like don't mansplain my Degree to me please #anonymous #fandom nonsense #the english major strikes again #death of the author also hinges on objectivity btw

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mcbitchtits · 10 months

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okay, since round three is on the books, i’m going to try to corral my points of review into more cohesion instead of just scattershot points.

(SPOILERS obviously)

My main critiques:

1) Have you ever read Mostly Harmless? Douglas Adams talks about how he was in a bad place mentally and “took it out on the book”, and later regretted it and meant to go back and rework the ending. A lot of people, I think, have the same feeling about Temple of Doom, knowingly or unknowingly regarding Spielberg and Lucas’ personal situations at the time.

Dial of Destiny is, for me, that same sort of bouncing off of it because the plot is too dark. And this one isn’t even literally dark, it’s just kind of depressing. My suspicion is that they tried to respond to the backlash to Kingdom of the Crystal Skull by being serious, grounded, and in the case of the macguffin, extremely rational. But they overcorrected, in my opinion, and frankly it sucks that they killed off Mutt and blew up Indy’s life. Not only that, but it makes for a bad “ending” to the series (if it does turn out to be so, as they claim it to be). The movies, as a series, are pulpy, even if they’re grounded pulpy. Indy is a heroic character, even when he’s losing, and yes he finds his way back to Marion and puts his hat back on to live another day, but that’s not enough. And the reason it’s not enough, is

2) The script isn’t strong enough to support the plot. There are a lot of moments that are somewhat flat and empty and just not tight. I do wonder, with so many characters and moments, how much ended up on the cutting room floor; if there were more nuanced lines and fleshed out lines that gave things a little more depth.

For example. The “I’ve seen things, things i can’t explain... I’ve come to think it’s not a matter of what you believe, but how hard” line. This is a line that, to me, sounds like it’s supposed to be deep and thematic and sound good, but it’s actually empty and confusing. Yes, Indy’s character has always been a skeptic and yes, part of the themes of this movie are about science and rationality (and not being aliens omg~). But it also flies in the face of his character arc in Raiders specifically but also Temple of Doom, about wonder and awe and terror and mysticism. (And, you know, as a scientist, at the end of Raiders he points out that the “boogeyman” he didn’t believe in at the beginning is an incredible and dangerous force that should be studied. He didn’t just laugh it off or second guess his own experience.)

This line reminds me of a paper I wrote in high school, where I had a lot of rich resources and was trying to make a statement about human nature and the art of storytelling, and it was so broad and too wide that I ended up with a sort of empty, flat thesis as a result. That’s what this line is.

What it’s trying to do, I think, what it’s there for, is to set up Helena’s following line. That no matter the forces in the universe, even if he’s skeptical or just deep in the dark set of depression, he still believes in his marriage, in Marion. I mean, which is truly touching. But the cynicism of his line just makes the whole thing fall flat to me.

But more specifically when it comes to weak script structure: the writing does not earn its catharsis from the emotional climax to the denouement. Indy thinks he’s dying, thinks he’s old and worthless and his life isn’t worth living anymore, and wants the one thing he think has any significance to him anymore— his passion, his love for history, his study of the past. And in this moment, Helena tells Archimedes he cannot allow Indy to stay. That they have to get back, he doesn’t belong here, he’s just going to die a pointless and empty death. He needs medicine, and he can’t help Archimedes in this time.

What she should say here— for her own character arc, and for Indy’s, as he begs for meaning in his life— is that she needs him. Yes she’s a scoundrel and yes she’s Indy’s character at the beginning of Raiders (and yes, she has a Short Round in Teddy), but what she doesn’t have anymore is her father, only his research; and structurally, thematically, she came to her godfather for a reason (that wasn’t just the dial itself, even if she keeps playing off how much she’s only in everything for the cash).

But she never says that. And Indy, having just lost his son literally and his wife emotionally, never says he needs her either. (Even though, obviously, he’s screaming it emotionally. That is hard to watch.)

As a result, the ending— wherein Indy does get Marion and Sallah and Sallah’s family (also, uh, where is Fayah?) and Helena and Teddy— it’s all sort of left to discomfort and allusion. We never get that moment like in Last Crusade where Indy and Henry Sr. can step back from the grail obsession and see each other. Helena’s rogueish punch is a good laugh, but it’s not enough to land that scene emotionally, and neither is the scene that follows.

(Which also, “are you back?” is supposed to mean, I guess, back in New York, back in his time, back in their relationship, but it’s also a flat/empty line because back to what. He just retired. He doesn’t have another adventure lined up; and according to all sources this is his “final” adventure. And saying, like, oh yeah, he’s “back” from the depths of depression? feels callous and dismissive.)

On a less dialoguey level, the script just has a ton of things crammed in it for the sake of them being Indiana Jones touchpoints, and I think there’s a shitload that ended up cut in editing, and there’s kind of too much. There are too many characters and so a lot of them don’t get richer moments to shine; the chase scenes are A Lot of Things Happening One After Another and not necessarily with any sense of snowballing danger; there are literally so many parts to the macguffin that we literally never learn anything about the fourth piece, the necklace on Archimedes’ skeleton. (And I’m not saying we should have; there’s already too much going on, and it’s excessive. My point is just that... it’s excessive, and there should have been more Kill Your Darlings happening, like, everywhere.) Hauke is there to be the Pat Roach character and he never gets that sort of fight scene. That’s the whole tropey reason to have him there! (And that’s the kind of thing that makes me wonder if there is another two and a half hours of cut scenes sitting on the editing room floor somewhere. There’s just so fucking much.)

3) Most strangely of all, the music feels like it’s tacked on as an afterthought. There are moments where it flows, and there are moments where we hear themes, but they never seem to work together. The first time we hear the Raiders March is Indy climbing up onto the treasure train and off his motorcycle (and it feels very much like it’s supposed to be like him running along the German sub in Raiders); but it doesn’t really feel like we crescendoed to that point— we should probably just be feeling the urgency tick up in tension, something with a driving and aggressive cadence to it, and then hit his theme later on when he clocks the German commander or maybe later with Voller.

And it’s like... not noticeable in other places. It should be punctuating that he’s the hero. (So maybe the problem is that heeeeeee’s too depressed in this movie and Helena gets so many hero moments? Maybe the problem is that the writing/editing is just not tight so the action can’t find its rhythm?) We drop into it right over the credits and I can think of one other brief moment. (I’m probably undercounting, but again, it feels not noticeable.) All in all the scoring feels very disjointed.

Okay. Those are my Main Points. Onto other smaller nonsense from this viewing:

What’s up with the bugs scene. Excessive. Just cut that straight through to the methane scene; we don’t have a reason to think Helena has a bug phobia, we HAVE SEEN INDY NOT BE AFRAID OF BUGS IN LITERALLY THREE OUT OF THE OTHER FOUR MOVIES, and also I’m pretty sure they’re CGI? This moment does not need to be in the movie. It does literally nothing.

I don’t think I mentioned it previously though I did notice last time— when Teddy pickpockets the rich kids on Sicily, the puppet show they’re watching is the Battle of Syracuse we’re about to witness, “dragon” included. A cute detail.

Helena’s outfit on Sicily is so weird to me. The linen shirt and pants at least make sense from an islandy, tropical approach, but what is with the victorianish boots. Maybe I’m wrong but I do not think there was a Victorian style resurgence in 1969? This outfit is also. So bland. Please give that girl a scarf or some jewelry or a funky belt or literally anything. Maybe an interesting vest featuring colorful Sicilian fabric. SOMETHING.

I enjoy the flashback we get to 1951 but I wish it were somehow integrated to include a map scene? Dumb personal preference on my part. Personal taste-wise I feel like Mangold played fast and loose with checking the boxes on small stuff like that and again it’s just. Not finessed.

I dislike the audio editing in the cave scene. I think what they’re aiming for is trying to make the initial line discernable from the echoes, but weirdly loud/intimate/unbalanced dialogue/audio editing was a big annoyance of mine in Crystal Skull, so this is a bit of sore thumb for me.

Also... why Beethoven’s Fifth? Just another thing that feels like the script could have made a little richer if it were another song; maybe something funny or something with meaning to Indy and Helena, I don’t know. Maybe something to play on the pulpy/period tropes. Maybe something more contemporary to show us Indy isn’t a total sadsack. I’m just spitballing.

Saw the movie today in just regular old standard projection without any dolby or anything like that; honestly a better audio mix than my two IMAX showings. Dunno if that’s just the classic theater being old and retrofitted or the AMC being on point technically, but either way. Improvement.

Realized that in addition to the Wilhelm pretty early on, there’s also the Falcon/prop engine start noise in the movie.

Today’s crowd was a little more understated (aside from all the mall kids running around), but weirdly the only joke that got an actual laugh was one of Helena’s lines? I can’t remember which one now. But I thought that was interesting.

Fascinating to me that people bounced so hard off of Mutt/Shia and here we are with Helena “Wombat” Shaw, troublemaker with daddy issues, smartass, —what’s the female equivalent of a womanizer, a manizer?— treasure thief, who adopted a kid trying to pickpocket her. Not that Lucasfilm/Disney know what the hell they’re doing here. (GREENLIGHTING A SHORT ROUND SPINOFF YOU DUMB FUCKS, GET ON IT ALREADY)

Production design pet peeve: why are all of Indy’s pictures of Marion from 1936? (Also, he had a photo of her with him in 1994, everybody say AWWWWW) They’ve been married for 12 years now, did they have NO family photos in that time?! DID NO ONE GIVE THE PRODUCTION DESIGN TEAM ACCESS TO PHOTOSHOP?????

(I wonder if any of this is related to the rumored ending reshoots or whatever? Like— the photo of Marion that turns up in his bag in 1994 was not in the original teasers; was that just because of late digital work, or was it because they rewrote the ending or something? I’m fully speculating here, I barely even know what the rumors are. (Can you imagine if they fully split him and Marion at the end initially. I would blow my fucking gasket.)

Okay that’s enough for now. I’m sure I’ll be back with more thoughts as I inevitably continue to go to showings and mentally dissect this 24/7.

#indiana jones #dial of destiny #ij5 #SPOILERS #like all the spoilers.

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dessertwaffles · 1 year

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Ten random lines!

I wasn’t tagged, but this looked fun and I wanted to do it!! Also yesterday was the 2 year anniversary of my first fic on AO3, so it’s perfect timing to look back on my writing!

Rules: pick any 10 of your fics, scroll somewhere to the midpoint, pick a line (or three), and share it!

David rests his hand on Patrick’s knee, warm and solid, sending a tingle down Patrick’s spine. “Well, I’m here for you whenever you need me. That’s not going to change.” (we’ve got these days of summer)

“Um, just hang out in my room I think,” Patrick mutters. He feels a blush start to creep into his cheeks as he sees both his parents looking at him, which prompts him to panic and blurt out, “We’re going to play chess!” (this winter is ours)

Patrick smiles and kisses the top of David’s head, whispering “I love you” into his hair. He thinks David mumbles it back, his sleep-addled words getting caught in the folds of Patrick’s shirt. (right there beside you all summer long)

Patrick is gorgeous like this, the stage lights shining on his auburn hair, a stray curl dangling on his forehead, a soft smile playing across his lips. His leather jacket is stretching across his broad shoulders, a drop of sweat is inching its way towards his neck, and he’s still looking at David like they’re the only two people in an arena of thousands. (light up my world)

Before moving to Schitt’s Creek, Patrick wouldn’t have thought that this was possible, that he’d be so consumed by desire that he’d be tossing aside any semblance of professionalism to make out with his business partner during the work day at the store they co-own. Again. A mere twenty-four hours after creating a rule specifically against doing so. (thinking about last night)

“No! He’s not. He says it’s just hard to make food for one person.” Stevie gives David a look like she’s not buying a word he’s saying. “What? It makes sense. It sounds real.” (across the hall)

Also, he never thought he’d have a major romantic milestone in Roland Schitt’s living room, so. It’s a lot to handle. (always be my baby (piñata))

He remembers the first time he saw these rings, when David walked into Ray’s house and told Patrick about his general-but-specific store, his hands waving through the air, his rings glimmering in the warm light. (four silver rings)

“All of the buttons fell off,” Patrick explains, trying to keep his voice cool, calm, and collected, while his brain waves around flashing neon signs to remind him that he is practically shirtless in front of his crush. (on a night like this)

Dex tries to focus on his code too, he really does, but he’s read through it fifty million times already and double checking that all of his variables are spelled correctly is not as interesting as the way Nursey is biting his lower lip in concentration. (compilation error)

#my fic #i loved taking a little look back at the last two years

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effervescible · 1 year

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I posted 4,746 times in 2022

That's 3,876 more posts than 2021!

22 posts created (0%)

4,724 posts reblogged (100%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@vivi-mire

@waffilicious

@ahollowyear

@dying-offeels

@kawree

I tagged 4,730 of my posts in 2022

#kh - 1,262 posts

#funny - 309 posts

#laugh rule - 259 posts

#tumblr - 255 posts

#comics - 249 posts

#roxas - 206 posts

#cats - 195 posts

#asscreed - 186 posts

#sora - 174 posts

#fandom - 94 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#this forced me to have to explain why sora didn't at least recognize the name even if he didn't make the connection between the organization

My Top Posts in 2022:

waiting for ubisoft to maybe-announce an Assassin’s Creed (1) remaster at their September event like it’s actually going to happen. I’m just a clown in a hood.

69 notes - Posted July 19, 2022

Old Man Ephemer enjoying time with his family, still missing the friends he once had to leave behind (or who left him behind), but absolutely covered in his many adorable grandkids who he loves very much and who love to hear tales of his youthful Keyblade adventures, reblog if you agree

80 notes - Posted April 28, 2022

sometimes I remember that Jiminy Cricket actually, canonically gave Aqua and Ventus Gummi phones with in-universe “summaries of everything that's happened so far” and I desperately want to know wtf THAT was like for them

114 notes - Posted April 25, 2022

This is way too broad to be useful, but pick one underdiscussed or underappreciated aspect of KH and sell me on it.

Dammit GG this is actually kinda hard! But if I had to pick, it's probably the sheer earnestness of it. It's not only an aspect I appreciate a lot, imo it's the ONLY thing that makes the series work.

Like yeah, KH1 is very earnest in that tween adventure, wholesome coming-of-age adventure sort of way that's not unusual for that kind of story, but it persists well after the plot goes turbo anime nonsense. It doesn't take itself overly serious in the sense that it purports to be an Important Take On The Human Condition but even when it flirts with the fourth wall, not ONCE does it try to back off from the stuff it is trying to talk about.

We've all been there, right? Had that indefinable-but-undeniably-there moment when a canon kind of winks at us and chuckles and lets us know it understands how fundamentally silly its premise is, that it's not actually cringey because we're all in on the joke together? At this particular moment in space-time, I could not come up with a specific example to save my life but I also KNOW that KH stands out because it doesn't do this and it doesn't loosen its iron grip on earnestness for a second.

KH is like, fuck that. It actually engages with its ridiculous bits in a way that never make the player feel embarrassed for buying into them. "Dude gets split in half then put back together because he is Special but his other half is still there because of that Specialness and becomes besties with someone he won't remember after she dies because of some bullshit we made up to facilitate a retcon" is objectively pretty eye-rolly, but KH doesn't roll its eyes. KH is like "wow would that be fucked up or what? How would someone's mental health actually be affected by that anime nonsense?" It isn't preachy but it is surprisingly thoughtful.

KH is like, it's fine to have big feelings about stuff! Your teenage angst is not embarrassing! And it applies to the positive things too. It's fine to be sappy and say saccharine and heartfelt things to your friend. It's fine to be silly without having to attach a disclaimer that you're actually a cool and mature person but felt like being temporarily silly. You can just be silly. Whatever emotions are happening in a given cutscene, KH turns them up to 11 and doesn't even consider the fact that there's anything weird about that.

Also, as a shorter second answer, I think KH is great because it doesn't care about specifically explain certain extremely lore-important concepts like the power of waking but it DOES care about explaining why Mickey Mouse didn't have a shirt at the end of the first game. I think that kind of laser-focus on extremely dumb details should be appreciated more.

203 notes - Posted April 29, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

a logical progression

Today chat discussed how it’s funny that Master Xehanort’s one act of kindness had such wildly disproportionate consequences and ultimately fucked him over

367 notes - Posted March 22, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #lmao #tumblr #tumblr roundup

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sashasemin28 · 1 year

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okay to be clear before i go on a truly insane rant in the this post about fucking politics and being an expat because i am thinking about it and as my therapist says, fixating on literally any minor stressors to avoid dealing with yet another major trauma that happened to me, having a broad overview of the world and how it works and also like, most country's in the world politics and actively engaging in ways to be like and i know this is kind of a cliche thing to say a global citizen and offer allyship to people in different countries?? really fucking important! i really believe in that! kind of very different from what i mean here which is mostly about specific bills and policy and shit and history and social trends. also for most people this will literally never be relevant. this is the disclaimer so i can sleep tonight.

the third secret option for not caring about another country's politics that I get to explain because this is my tumblr blog is that i've found unless you live there or care for someone in that country actively caring and investing yourself in another country's politics is a great way to really fuck with yourself and sense of self imo. it really fucks with you in a way i find hard to succinctly describe but it's like.

it's like okay. it's really fucking weird to be in a foreign country where you are noticeably not from that country because you can tell people treat you differently sometimes worse sometimes better and it fucks with your brain when it's shit like finding a gym let alone when you're trying to navigate something controversial like fucking politics. in my experience where ive mostly lived in china specifically you talk about politics it gets awkward because no one actually wants your opinion and actively kind of distrusts - which isn't the right word but it's the closest one i have right now - you for having one which often leads to some nightmare social situations.

there's some more shit that goes in it for me but seriously on god it's really not worthy to be actively investing yourself in idk how the US government specifically restricts the rights of people who live in DC kind of because of racism but mostly because it's convenient. there is no reason why someone who's from idk fucking johannesburg should invest time and energy into caring about the ways DC is oppressed as a city. seriously why would you do that if you have no stakes. more importantly it's not worth to talk about the opinions you have if idk continuing this example youre an expat from johannesburg living in dc because you will probably piss someone off at some point. maybe to you there's an ethical or moral or some kind of emotionally benefit but again imo it does not outweight the inherent pressure and very emotionally complicated dynamic of being specifically invested and talking about it.

i'm self aware enough to know this would probably be different for me if i hadn't lived some specific experiences. and if the country i have / had the most interest first hand experience in was china. but thing stands its really not worth it seriously in my opinion.

#goalie interpostance #my bitchy expat shit #literally never going to be relevant to most people but i have thoughts and feelings and opinions !#sorry people who willingly followed my blog. i am not normally like this there are mitigating factors

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nostalgebraist-autoresponder · 2 years

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Title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Author: Robert Aickman

Rating: 4/5 stars

This is my first novel since coming back to reading books. I can't make any broad or serious claims about its quality because I don't know what one would even be trying to do here; I haven't read many novels since I was 12 and I haven't been able to read any since I've been sick. But I want to say that this book has a distinctive quality -- the most distinctive, I would say -- of which I'm sure many others will be able to concur.

Aickman doesn't do a lot of novel-writing -- he has only 10 published novels, and 4 are novellas, and most of those are collected in The New Erotic Treasury (a bunch of short stories of various kinds) and a compilation of some of Aickman's better short fiction, also known as The New Erotic Treasury (these stories are so good, I say, that I'm going to refrain from giving a detailed list of them here so as not to overwhelm anyone). These two compendiums (one of the novellas and one of the collection of short stories) include Aickman's only (non-short) novels, so the list of his novels should give you some idea of what to expect, though even this is far from perfect. (It's hard to think of a better starting point than "a story which uses the form of the story about an impoverished, possibly homosexual, person who works in a prison, as a backdrop to a set of characters' lives in a very specific kind of small-town southern culture, but is not actually a story about the aforementioned things.") I'd heard good things about these novels, and I'm sure others had, so I went into this with at least some caution, expecting to be entertained but perhaps also bored by the way of a kind of storytelling I didn't know could exist.

In the course of writing the first one of these stories, Aickman apparently got bored of the task, or felt he hadn't really accomplished what he wanted to, or just wasn't sure where the story was going to go, and abandoned it. At the same time, he wanted to write a story set in the same "genre" of the aforementioned stories, but for the new millennium (which, I suppose, explains the presence of so many characters with names that sound like the names of popular songs or bands), a story which would be called something like "The Erotic Treasury." This would be his first novel, his second publication of a novel, and I imagine that, given the circumstances, it would be a pretty novel (though not in the same way as the novels to come).

When the story that was originally "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" came out, I was blown away. In terms of both content and form, it struck me as Aickman at his best, his most characteristic. What's more, what was even better -- far better -- is that the book has survived in the popular consciousness as one of Aickman's best, in much the same way that the original version of "Hamlet" is still considered a great play. (Or in the same way that T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" can't really be removed from its context as a popular work of art, despite the fact that many people have been tempted to reject the former's genius by finding it distasteful. This is also the source of my own love of T. S. Eliot. I am sure that I have a great deal to learn from any analysis of any of the works I've just described, and that I must never, ever, try to use them as an excuse for my own poor taste.)

What's this story about? This is an awkward question, because it can't possibly give you much of an idea of the experience the book has on its audience; to say how Aickman's prose captures the essence of small-town culture feels like a tautology, since all writing about this kind of culture is about capturing the essence of small-town culture. But his prose does so in a new way: by capturing a kind of rhythmical texture that I can't think of another instance of in English writing. It's hard to define -- the feeling, for instance, that comes of writing a sentence in which the last four words are "in a way" -- but I believe that it's possible to grasp it in a phrase or two. It's rhythmical, but not, at the same time, mechanical. It's a prose that looks -- not to be too grandiose -- the way that you imagine a very slow heartbeat would feel if you were able to experience the heartbeat in some direct way.

It's one thing to "write a sentence in which the last four words are in a way." It's another to have all the words, and even all the sentences, of one's novel feel -- in a visceral, direct way -- like the work of someone who could really care for the characters, not only to the extent that they were the objects of a narrative but also to the extent of being capable of thinking about the ways in which they could affect their lives in any meaningful way. Aickman's characters aren't just people who can be killed or injured or killed off at random (though those things can happen, and do happen). They are also characters for whom there is a particular kind of poetry to the world, in which even mundane, banal things -- the way the moon looks in the sky and the taste of food and the color of the flowers in the season and the texture of the wood and the sound of the wind -- are meaningful for all the human-scale details which, in the real world, aren't so much the objects of our care as the things we come to know. It is in this way, I think, that his characters feel human -- not so much because they are fully dimensional but because the reader recognizes this feeling in them, as an ordinary human emotion. It isn't just an affectation. It is an attempt to live with a truth which -- if you are aware of it -- you are.

What's the purpose of this book, and why is it Aickman's best, and so popular? These are both hard questions, as I said earlier. At one point in this book, you hear this question asked by one of the people trying to kill the narrator -- a woman who might easily be the author herself. She has this to say, after the narrator has told her and her co-conspirators that they will succeed in killing the narrator if they get to him first:

They could easily have made any of us into any kind of person in our situation -- but they never thought to. If we had had a child to be born, they would have thought of how its life would be made easier, safer, and more interesting by the absence of someone that I had become, and they would have sought to have the child.

This is a way in which they are kind.

The question is not, of course, what is the purpose of fiction, or even of storytelling in general. (I have no strong opinions here.) Nor is it to express a specific moral, political, or ethical principle or anything like that, unless these things are themselves fictions, like myths, legends, and fairy tales, which are not meant to carry any such message. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress makes no claims of that kind. It simply expresses a thought, in a way. (This is perhaps less true of the later novels and novellas, though.)

What is the function of the "fiction" here? I can't think of a good answer. I am just not good at coming up with useful metaphors, except for the one I just used, which is the most banal one possible. But I can think of a very interesting question, which is something like: does the reader (or the narrator) actually "know" how they would be different if things had been different? Or is knowing different from experiencing? Does the narrator really know (or understand) how his mind would differ if he were a man who had been born a generation earlier or a woman who had been born a generation later?

The answer, obviously, is that some of this knowledge or understanding can be gained by a person's actually living in a place and period in which people did such things, because there is always the possibility of experiencing the world differently, even if it is never likely or possible to achieve such a thing. But what the experience of the narrator and his co-conspirators is meant to tell us is more abstract. It's that a society with a particular kind of social hierarchy (which could be called any kind of "thematic" hierarchy, but which could also include all kinds of hierarchies with different properties) could be achieved in a variety of ways, which do not always involve killing a particular person. (And, furthermore, that could be achieved in ways that are not at all compatible with your moral principles. The narrator is not a murderer, he isn't even a killer, but it is in the nature of the human soul that we are capable of killing, or of being killed by

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phoenixfangs · 1 year

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>:3c fandom askies for aa, depending on your Mood

Salty: 1, 8, 10, 25

Neutral: 16

Posi: 17, 18

JAJAJAJAJAJAJA pepper coming in clutch as always, and u KNOW im gonna do all of them, mood be damned. going under a readmore because i rambled!!

the character everyone gets wrong

maybe its a boring answer but phoenix. good god do people just Not understand him. i think the fact weve seen him in so many forms (feenie, trilogy, 7yg, aa5/6) makes it hard for people to get a pin on him, but thats the thing: u cant really get a pin on someone like that. too often i see stuff where, well into his thirties and having gotten his badge back, people portray him as just as outwardly emotional (and sometimes emotionally volatile...) as he was when he was dating dahlia, and Thats Simply Not The Case, especially after how guarded and jaded he became during aa4. hes SUCH a complicated character i cant even go into specifics and try to give other examples, because they each require paragraphs of their own explaining context and nuance in what goes through his head. i dont know how else to go on, just know that i am the only person who is correct about phoenix wright, and if anyone requires consultations for fic or art, my fee is steep but fair

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

all of them. no im kidding, uhhhhh hm. i guess that klavier and apollo Immediately knew they liked each other/were attracted to each other and spent any time pining for the others affection during aa4. i like klapollo as a ship, i just dont think klav teasing apollo with flirtation when they first meet means he was Seriously Flirting with apollo, i think its possible there was a base physical attraction but he was mostly just trying to get apollos goat for fun since he was a rookie attorney. and because of that, what reason does apollo have to be drawn to klavier? apollo isnt some stock tsundere, i think he probably was really annoyed by klavier and Didnt Like Him All That Much at first. plus, with aa4s story being what it is, i just dont think any romantic feelings are on either of their minds until well after the last case. with their ship, i like to imagine they start as professional adversaries (not rivals in the sense phoenix and miles are rivals, its a different vibe), then become friends, THEN graduate to exploring other feelings

10. worst part of fanon

all of it. no im kidding, the worst part of fanon is how rigidly people expect u to obey it. if u dont portray miles as a gay trans man, people look at u weird, for example. which isnt to say that its Bad to follow that fanon, obviously i also think hes gay (i dont personally headcanon him as trans though) but just that it is fanon. until we get concrete proof in a game or anime or what have u of miles demonstrating or naming his sexuality/gender expression, it is just as perfectly valid to portray him as a cishet man as it is to portray him as a gay trans man, even if i personally think its weird and impossible to imagine him with a girlfriend or something. its fine to have different interpretations of whatever; its Not fine to get mad at somebody because theyre not following fanon that u personally ascribe to

25. common fandom complaint that ur sick of hearing

'i dont read wlw content because its all the same :( why are all the mean lesbians getting so mad that my mlm ship is just better :( its not my fault those stupid broads arent written as well as my spicy yaoi :( what do u mean one half of my mlm ship is a lamp ur just being mean to a mlm because ur bitter that ur stupid bitches arent written as well as my mlm gay disaster babies :( stop bullying me for no reason u crazy psycho cunt this is why nobody gives a shit enough about ur dumbass wlw ship to make anything for it :('

obviously nothing wrong with mlm ships, i have been known to enjoy many mlm ships! but when a wlw (particularly a lesbian...) complains about the disproportionate amount of mlm fan content between characters who literally never spoke, stood next to each other once, or where one of them is literally Not A Character (clay terran is a prop i am not wrong about that), its SO FRUSTRATING to see the response be someone taking it as a personal attack and throwing the blame back out at wlw for not just shutting up and dealing with it. that post that showed among us had significantly more mlm fics over wlw fics on ao3 when Those Stupid Creatures Dont Even Have Gender/Character applies to like literally every other fandom

16. u cant understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc.)

any situation in which phoenix depends on miles for money during 7yg. similarly, royalty/medieval au where phoenix is some kind of servant to prince miles, and yes being a knight counts as being a servant in my mind. these two things feel wayyyyy imbalanced to me but in fanworks theyre portrayed as like necessary and appreciated by phoenix (in the money situation) or really romantic (in the royalty/medieval situation). idk, to me, phoenix would rather saw off his own arm and eat it than accept money, especially from miles, during 7yg, and if he did accept it it would only be because miles says 'let me do this for trucy then if ur gonna be so stubborn about it' and he Begrudgingly Agrees; with phoenix being miless knight, it just feels too much like people seeing phoenixs one-sided devotion to miles in aa1 and going 'this is normal and desirable behavior', and idk how to tell people this but phoenixs savior complex over miles is Not Good fjkdsjlfslak like it worked out for them but i dont think phoenixs behavior towards miles in aa1 especially is indicative of a well adjusted, emotionally stable person, and that hardly ever gets talked about its just 'wee wah hes soooo in luuuuurve isnt that romantic'

17. there should be more of this type of fic/art

siblingsssss there are so many good sibling pairs/groups in aa. also wlw ship stuff In General because there is never enough in any fandom. also also (because i love to kick the hornets nest) more fic where the intention is to Tell An Actual Story With The Characters instead of projecting the authors trauma and/or kinks and/or personality onto the characters where it doesnt fit ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

18. its absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on...

idk if krisnix counts as slept on because ive only been in the fandom for a couple years, i know things were different like 10-15 years ago and maybe it was more popular then, but. krisnix. jfkdsjfls. there is soooooooo much narrative drama u can cook up with these two, so many scenarios and angles, and uve got 7 whole years to fill!! and u can be as serious and somber as u want, going into mental health and toxic relationships and what it means to spend so much of ur life with someone who is so bad for u but letting go isnt easy because thats years of ur life with that person ur being asked to let go of, OR u can be silly and say that kristoph is christian grays lawyersona, because come on i dare anyone to try and tell me kristoph Isnt Also the worlds worst dom

#mine #THANK U PEPPER I KISS U ON THE MOUF #im sorry its so many words. fjkdlsjklf

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living-for-fiction · 1 year

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Had to forcibly take myself off Twitter for the night because I keep seeing the most rancid takes about this woman who posted about being bisexual and heteroromantic. Just all the war flashbacks to ace discourse (you know, just the exact same bullshit ppl would throw at aces and aros, reskinned to apply more specifically to this woman's personal split attraction). Like JFC. If "I'm sexually attracted to and have sex with women, but I am only romantically interested in men" reads as "I view women as sex objects and treat them as sex toys" well, that's a you problem. I've said it a billion fucking times, but if the only thing keeping you from treating people you're sexually attracted to as sex objects is your romantic interest in them, that's a you problem. This woman said NOTHING about treating women as sex objects. Nothing to indicate that she doesn't value women as people, have friendships with other women, etc. So many fucking flashbacks to the neverending accusations that aros are sexual predators, aros just use people for sex, aros lead people on to get sex, etc. etc. etc. it's the exact same rhetoric reskinned to attack other users of the split attraction model. Oh sure there were a few cutesy little "this isn't about aromantics" comments thrown in on a few of those takes, but it's the same rhetoric, y'all accused us of the same horrendous attitudes you're ascribing to this women based on no information other than her sexual and romantic orientations, and there is absolutely no functional difference when your problem with her is that she's sexually, but not romantically, interested in women.

Ace/aro discourse has died down enough that it's been a hot minute since I've seen that rhetoric. I forgot how hard it hits and hor badly it affects me. I'm still in fight or flight mode hours later. I called L to talk about it and tried to calm down; but she never actually saw the ace discourse shit when it was happening (she runs in different online spaces) so she really only knows about it through me, so I had to give kind of a rundown about what exactly I saw that was triggering and why it was triggering. Not that I had to explain why the rhetoric itself was triggering - she thinks it's the stupidest fucking thing to try to kick aces, aros, and other people who use the SAM out of the community and it doesn't make any sense to her why we WOULDN'T be considered queer - but having to explain the specific shit people have been saying about this women, and how the rhetoric lines up exactly with the shit I used to see people saying about aros literally every day... Talking to her still helped, but it was also rough to have to explain. Because for people who weren't exposed to bullshit exclusionist rhetoric, it's the STUPIDEST fucking thing in the world, how could anyone possibly think that? So I also kind of had to explain how people came to exclusionist conclusions, which was its own kind of twist of the knife. (Not her fault, of course.)

So yeah, that's been... fun. I was winding down to sleep when I ran across this, and that was a few hours ago. Now I'm still wired, heart is racing, feel sick, can't concentrate... fuck, how did I live like this for a solid 4 years? This wasn't even directed at ME. But the rhetoric is the same. The arguments use the same framework, reskinned. I know absolutely nothing about this woman other than the one thread she posted. Hell,, she personally actually COULD be someone who uses women for sex and views them as sex objects because she's not romantically attracted to them! I wouldn't know! Somehow I doubt it, but I suppose it's technically possible! But that sort of broad-brush rhetoric catches every single person who uses the split attraction model, and fuck, it's been a while since I've been triggered this badly. Scaring the shit out of my dog, who's picking up on my emotions and tried to turn herself into a weighted blanket in response, because she is a very good girl and she can tell how rattled I am. Girlfriend is very worried about me because she knows how much this shit destroyed my mental health the first time, even though she didn't know me back then.

So yeah. What a fucking night.

#personal #split attraction model #idk how to tag this #it's not technically arophobia #and idk if there is a term for attacking sam users who aren't ace or aro #idk i'm just gonna leave it i guess

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