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theres-a-goldensky · 5 years ago

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16 + 2 Reddie Fic Recs pt. 2

I’m back and still on my Bill Hader bullshit, so here’s another round of Reddie fic recs, because I can’t stop reading and sometimes sifting through the insane amounts of fic is a nightmare. So if you feel my pain and need some (at least in my opinion) fun stories, then come along with me on a magical journey filled with men crying during sex, hypochondria, and your mom jokes.

As ever, feel free to reblog and check out my other rec lists for the following fandoms:

IT chapter 2 list part one - Reddie

Good Omens fic

The Untamed list one and two - various pairings, mostly Wangxian

Various BL Series fic (fandoms: Love By Chance, TharnType, 2Moons series, My Engineer, Until We Meet Again, 2gether, History3: Trapped)

Or just head over to my bookmarks on AO3.

All my recs are completed, almost all of them are post-It chapter 2. * - denotes a favorite

1. I killed a clown. AMA! by liesmyth - ~10,000 words, teen - The history of Eddie and Myra’s marriage shown through their posts on reddit. The voices here are great, and it really feels like reading the reddit forums, down to the people sleuthing through their past posts and comments to try and figure out if what they’re saying is real or an elaborate troll.

r/relationships

Posted by u/martymcfly6xo 7 months ago

My (39F) husband (39M) likes horrible stand-up comedy. How can I stop him from bringing this up in front of our mutual friends?

For the last year or so my husband has been watching a lot of stand-up comedy on youtube. I want him to have something relaxing to do (he works a lot and gets really invested in his ‘hands-on’ hobbies in a way I’m not sure is good for him) but I was very puzzled by this discovery as he likes very crass acts and that is certainly not the kind of humor hubby usually enjoys...

2. all of the kids back home believing much more than you do by eatcheeseliveforever - ~11,000 words, explicit - This is a fix-it fic, which is becoming more and more rare in this fandom as we collectively started deciding that Eddie Kaspbrak doesn’t need to be brought back to live, because he never died in the first place, dammit. It has some great pining by Richie. You can really feel his grief and desperation as he searches for a way to get Eddie back. The other Losers are great in this too, especially Mike with his whales.

"A boat, actually," murmured Mike. "I'm on a whale-watching cruise."

Richie mouthed the words "whale watching cruise" to himself. Empirically he knew such things existed, that they happened not far away from the coast where he lived, but it felt like several fucking galaxies away from where he was, surrounded by the ghosts of takeouts and blackouts past and the actual ghost-ghosts, who he couldn't step in or stub his toe on at three in the morning, but hurt so much worse.

"He said you've been googling resurrection rituals."

Richie scrounged through his pile of empties, hoping one wasn't. "Bill talks too much."

"Richie." A sigh, or a wave, or a really quiet whale. "You're not going to find a resurrection ritual on Google."

"I've found hundreds," said Richie. "Funny thing, though, they all seem to call for orgies. Or virgin sacrifices. Or sacrificing someone's virginity in an orgy. I'm hoping Ben will volunteer as tribute."

3. * - you’ve got the answers to my confessions by QueerOnTilMorning - ~17,000 words, explicit - This is the good stuff right here. Richie accidentally sexts Eddie and Eddie is IN. TO. IT. This fic starts with excellent phone sex, there’s misunderstandings and confessions in the middle, and then it ends with super hot sex. There’s a brief part with karaoke that was a bit of a lull in the story, but doesn’t take away from how great the rest is.

suck on ur tongue

show u how much I missd that mouth

when u start getting weak in the knees

thats when ill get on mine

He set the phone aside to unzip his pants, palming himself through his boxers, already half-hard.

Then he froze.

The text he had just replied to--it was what he'd expected Travis to say, but it wasn't how Travis would say it. That text began with a capital letter and contained punctuation. That text was from--

"Oh, fuck, no," Richie whispered, and his phone rang.

Incoming call: Eds

4. * - L'Appel du Vide by Mackem - ~92,000 words, teen - I know, I know, almost 100k and no sex, but hear me out! The pining in this fic is so exquisitely beautiful and wrenching. Eddie’s POV is excellent and feels really spot on. The other Losers are well represented, especially Ben and Bev. In fact, the group dynamics here are almost as good as the relationship stuff. The later chapters bring in a subplot about the deadlights that I wasn’t that interested in, but it’s still done really, really well, and that’s only a side plot that doesn’t impact that exceptional story of Eddie and Richie figuring out how to stop being dummies.

Two messages, however, are from Stanley, sent to him privately. He opens them, and is met with a picture of Richie, apparently taken without him realising.

It shows him laughing, his eyes crinkled at the corners behind his glasses, and his smile bright and broad as a hand gestures wildly in the air. The other hand is in his hair, pushing it out of his eyes as he tilts his head back, displaying the line of his throat beneath his stubble.

The breath is punched from Eddie at the sight of it.

He stares at it for a long moment, surprised by the depth of his reaction. His stomach is swirling happily, a bubble of excitement growing at the pit, and he cannot help but feel a heated flush build at his cheeks.

It’s probably just because Richie looks like he’s enjoying himself. It’s good to see his friend having fun. That has to be it.

Then he reads Stan’s message.

Stan: He was talking about you. He does that a lot.

5. my love a beacon in the night - by zach_stone - ~4500 words, explicit - Richie is on the road doing shows through Christmas. His friends have a surprise for him. I know it’s almost Valentine’s Day, but it’s never the wrong time for a fluffy Christmas story imo.

“Yep, just got to my hotel,” Richie says. “Now I’m getting ready for my big Christmas Eve plans.”

Eddie snorts. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“Well according to my TV guide, they’re doing a rerun of The Mistletoe Promise, so I’m all fuckin’ set,” Richie says, grinning when Eddie laughs. On Eddie’s end of the line, he hears the sound of cars passing by, the muffled chatter of people, and says, “Are you outside?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah,” Eddie says.

Richie glances at the clock on the nightstand. It’s after ten; Eddie’s not one to be wandering around Times Square after dark. He frowns slightly. Eddie’s been unusually vague about his holiday plans, so Richie has no clue what he’s up to this evening. Not that it’s any of his business. Maybe he’s started seeing someone and is spending the holidays with them. Richie has a sudden image of Eddie, arm-in-arm with some generically pretty woman, taking in the lights and decorations around the city. It opens a pit in his stomach.

6. Coming Back and Coming Out: Richie Tozier's 2019 by Lunatical - ~2000 words, teen - I genuinely adore the mixed media fics that this fandom has spawned. This one is an excerpt from a magazine interview with Richie as he restarts his career.

Slouched on his couch in a cheesy Hawaiian shirt and torn-up jeans, Richie Tozier looks exactly like the manchild he is describing himself to be. Next to him, sitting up straight and dressed in a lovely suit that most people would consider appropriate for an interview, his husband rolls his eyes.

When we scheduled this interview, Tozier insisted we hold it at their house, citing a desire for the interview to be “as chill as possible”—in his own words, of course. He argued that seeing the two of them in their usual environment would help me get a better idea of the kind of relationship they have. After walking into their apartment and seeing the way they’ve decorated the place, I have to admit that I can understand why.

7. baby, there’s no other superstar by kaspbrakziers - ~7000 words, mature - Another mixed media fic that shows the progression of Richie and Eddie’s relationship and Richie’s career through tweets, texts, and interviews. Eddie not knowing how to turn off the capslock on his phone absolutely sent me.

Search history

Today Sunday, 13 November 2016

should i get a divorce? - Google Search

Unhappily Married: Should I get a divorce? - Yahoo Answers

10 Signs Your Marriage Is Over - Buzzfeed

how to divorce? - Google Search

How To File For Divorce (With Pictures) - wikiHow

how to divorce someone without them getting angry? – Google Search

can you divorce someone without telling them? - Google Search

8. Goes on Trips for the Scenery by InkandOwl - ~4500 words, teen - Eddie dies and then comes back to life and tries to get some perspective. I liked the conversations between Eddie and Richie and then way that Eddie starts to take care of himself. The end is really sweet.

If cosmic power and a literal alien space clown’s death wasn’t going to bring him back to life, Eddie was certain that the terrible pain of hearing Richie beg, his tears dropping onto Eddie’s face, probably would’ve done it. He feels sick just thinking about it. About what it all means. “Yeah, Rich, I will.” He could throw a jab at him, tell him something about eating like an adult for once, but he wants to be easy with him right now. Richie deserves it. “You’ll text, right?”

Richie looks down at the prepaid cricket phone in Eddie’s hand and laughs, “There’s no fucking way that thing gets texts.”

“It does.” Eddie grins, “You could call too.”

The fight drains from Richie, his shoulder slumping and he sighs, “Yeah, Eds, I’ll call.”

9. cause i'm about to blow that back out by thotgreeves - ~5000 words, explicit - Here, have some porn. Eddie wears lingerie and Richie loses his goddamn mind. Features submissive top Richie and his unending boner for Eddie.

Richie really should have learnt to never underestimate Eddie Kaspbrak by now. It had come close to killing Richie once, but Eddie might actually be trying to finish him off.

Because the other perk of always letting Eddie go ahead of him was that it gave Richie a prime view of Eddie's ass. Eddie knew about this part and was okay with it. He was wearing a high-waisted pair of slacks that Richie was pretty sure came from the women's section, slightly loose in the legs but nicely filled out by his ass. Richie had been very vocal in the past about how hot they got him, which signaled that Eddie definitely wanted to have sex tonight, and that was already enough to make Richie's dick twitch in excitement. He hadn't been prepared for the finishing blow.

Richie's eyes were fixed, pendulum-like, on how Eddie's slacks were hugging his butt perfectly with every step he took, tight enough to show off the outline of his underwear. Only the folds didn't sit where Richie had expected them to. Instead, Richie realized, his mouth going dry, that in the absence of boxers, there was only a V-shaped crease running from Eddie's hips to between his asscheeks, which could only mean-

Eddie was wearing a thong.

10. * - I’ll Be Homo For Christmas by Amuly - ~15,000 words, explicit - Bill and Audra get a divorce, so Bill moves into Richie’s house with him. Eddie, watching all of this from New York, where he’s still married to Myra, is super, super ok and fine with it in every way.

Except then Richie started posting.

Just stupid shit, mostly with Bill. It wasn’t even real. Eddie knew Bill wasn’t gay and him and Richie were just fucking around ‘for the ‘gram!’ But the more posts Eddie scrolled past on Richie’s Instagram—

Bill in the kitchen swatting at Richie with a spatula.

Richie and Bill at the pound, Richie rating dogs on adoptability, Richie begging Bill to adopt a dog with him.

Richie in the morning with bedhead, smiling blearily into the camera as Bill…

Well. Eddie couldn’t even remember what stupid thing Bill was supposed to be doing in the background of that photo because his eyes couldn’t get past Richie’s bedhead and shirtless torso, chest hairs creeping up towards his collarbones and the little dip at the base of his throat.

Eddie hadn’t thought he was homophobic. But he must have some unresolved issues with it, because he got a stomachache every time he looked at that photo of Richie. Eddie popped a Tums and resolved to talk about it with his therapist.

11. A High-Five is a Hug You Can Hit by Amuly - ~26,000 words, explicit - This fic shows us times throughout their friendship when Eddie and Richie would invent reasons to touch each other without even knowing why. This author feels the same bone deep conviction about Richie crying during sex that I do, and I greatly appreciate that. Plus, all of their stories are fantastic, including this one.

“You know, one of the symptoms of hypothermia is feeling like you’re warm. So like, your body gets so cold that it gets hot, and then you start taking off your clothes-”

“Bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you, Eddie?” Richie shot back at him without turning around.

“Why don’t you ask your sister how much she liked it last week!” Eddie hollered up at him. Richie just flipped him off without looking. That kinda… bugged Eddie. What the fuck did Richie think he was doing leading up the group with Bill? Why was he stuck back here with Stan? Eddie glanced over at Stan, who was trudging tiredly through the woods alongside him, breath puffing out in little clouds of smoke.

“Okay, Stan?”

Stan glanced over at him, confused. Then he shrugged. “Yeah, fine. Cold.”

“Well that’s better than feeling warm.” And now Eddie was back on track. “Because, if anyone starts feeling warm, they should tell the others immediately. That’s a sign of hypothermia. And we have to warm you up. But you have to do it gradually, you can’t just jump in like, a pot of boiling water-”

12. * - fall apart of stay intact by kaspbrak_kid - ~19,000 words, teen - A more melancholy take on the Christmas fic. This story takes Richie’s self-esteem issues and mental problems and amps them up in a way that feels entirely realistic. The gang comes together to celebrate Christmas, and everyone is walking on eggshells because last Christmas was a bad one for Richie. Also, Eddie moves into the house literally right next to Richie’s, and I find that detail endlessly charming.

“Five minutes ago. I called you, and you didn’t answer. Because you were outside, apparently, fucking...stargazing in December! With no hat on!”

“It’s about the Vitamin D!” Richie says. Now that he’s moved a little, he can really feel the cold—his ears are aching, and his face is numb. “Reflecting off the moon, or something. I have seasonal depression, you know!”

“You have seasonal stupidity,” Eddie mutters, audibly rubbing his hands together. “Just get inside.”

“Yours or mine?” Richie jokes.

Eddie doesn’t get the memo. “Mine, obviously. I’ll make you hot chocolate.”

“Oh,” Richie says, and sits up. “Um. Okay, be right there.”

“Oh, thank god,” Eddie says, and hightails it to his back door, cursing about the cold.

13. evidence of a happier future by lagaudiere - 23,000 words, mature - I am here, leading the Jealous!Eddie revolution. Why aren’t there more fics about this. Have you SEEN Eddie Kaspbrak, can you IMAGINE him jealous? Make this happen, fandom. Anyway, in this one, Richie has a boyfriend back in LA. Eddie has trouble dealing with that as he tries to figure himself out and pick up the pieces of his life post-Derry.

“It’s not gonna be like Mike’s announcement, don’t worry,” Richie says hastily. “And it’s not like, a huge thing, so don’t make it a huge thing. But you guys are like, my best friends, and I just wanted you to know that I’m, uh. Gay.”

He turns up his palms and raises his eyebrows in a gesture that suggests a magician presenting his audience with an empty hat after making the rabbit disappear, and Eddie says, “Are you joking?”

“What? Jesus, no, Eddie.” Richie’s face falls, and Eddie instantly feels guilty. “I’m trying to be sincere here.”

“Sorry,” Eddie says immediately, feeling all of their friends looking at him with reproach. “I was just — if you weren’t, I wouldn’t think you should… joke about it.”

“Well, I am,” Richie says. He sounds slightly put out — and who wouldn’t be, Eddie scolds himself, by that ridiculous response. “I have all the gay credientials. I have a boyfriend, partner, whatever people say. I don’t really tell people because of the whole, stage persona, thing. But yeah.”

“Richie!” Bev’s voice breaks through the awkwardness, and she reaches across the table to squeeze his hand. “Thank you for telling us. Really.”

And the others all join in, a chorus of voices telling Richie they love him and they’re proud of him, and Ben is saying, “I wanna see a picture of the guy!” and Eddie’s throat feels like it’s closing up.

14. The ‘Do Not Fucking Touch Me’ Tour by MellytheHun - ~23,000 words, explicit - It’s Richie’s comeback special, and he makes it a big one. This...isn’t really a comedy show, but the author lampshades that. It’s an excuse to have Richie talk about how much he loves each of his friends individually, and it’s extremely entertaining. Richie doesn’t know that Eddie is in the audience watching it all.

“Hey, uhm… Eddie… he couldn’t reschedule his thing? He - I mean... it… it was really that important?”

She feels awful for him immediately, but not wanting to spoil what would ultimately be a lovely surprise, she tells him, “I’m sorry, Rich. He said it was urgent. He was really sorry about it.”

Her phone buzzes with a text from Eddie right as Richie curses under his breath, missing the noise. She clutches her phone more tightly in her fist, knowing Eddie is wondering where his seat is going to be; she bought him a separate ticket, elsewhere in the theatre, so Richie wouldn’t catch him sitting among them, as he will absolutely, inevitably look over to the Losers for most of the show.

“Okay,” Richie surrenders sadly, “Uh - I guess he’ll see it eventually, right?”

Smiling forlornly at him, she pats his arm, and tells him, “don’t worry, Richie. Your genius will inevitably be forced upon us all.”

He smiles at her, gives her a kiss on the cheek, and when Bill jokingly asks why he didn’t get one, Richie flips him off, and reminds them to treat themselves to the bar in the lobby.

Once he’s backstage, Beverly takes her phone out, and emails Eddie his ticket, explains that she’s already convinced Richie he’s not coming, and to make sure he doesn’t show up too early, or Richie will notice.

15. The List by cissues - ~7000 words, teen - Eddie finds a list he wrote as a teenager. Richie tries his best to fulfill them all. This is very sweet.

‘ All the things I want. Everything I’m not allowed to have. A perfect summer. ”

The words hit gentler than he thought they would, but they still hit and he finds himself blinking away at a wetness at the corner of his eye. He wipes at it and sniffles and Richie peers sidelong at him to make sure he’s okay. He is, he’s fine, and Richie never dotes on him when things are, generally, okay. Only when he needs it, which is one of the many things he loves about what they have now.

“This is… this is like a fucking bucket list for the most repressed child in the world.” Richie says, breathless.

Eddie rolls his eyes to hide the sting. “You’re looking at him,” he says, bitter. Richie frowns at him but turns back to the paper. Another thing Eddie loves, Richie never takes his trauma-induced bait. His knee-jerk reactions developed over years of what he’s now comfortable enough to call abuse.

16. Richie Tozier Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions by DeadpanMage - ~2000 words, teen - This is a short one, but the transcript of this popular YT video format with Richie felt spot on in terms of characterization and Richie’s voice.

[Back to the text screen: “So WIRED asked Richie Tozier some of the internet’s burning questions.” Cut back to Richie, now holding a poster board with several Google autocomplete searches half covered.]

Richie: I’ve undergone something of a rebranding in the past year, so I wonder how many of these questions are going to be super irrelevant-slash-embarrassing. Probably all of them. Let’s get started! [He tears the covering off of the first question.] Alright, that’s not bad. “How to pronounce Richie Tozier?” Well, we’re only on question one and I’ve already said it like a hundred times so there you go. And that’s “Richie Tozier” spelled J-O-H-N M-U-L-A-N-E-Y, so if you’ve got any complaints be sure to send them that way. Next question!

You can check out a larger list of stories I’ve enjoyed in my AO3 bookmarks. And finally, if you’re interested, here are the two fics I’ve written:

1. Waiting For a Sign - ~6000 words, explicit - Eddie meets Richie again and comes to the startling realization that he totally wants to hit that.

Maybe if Richie wasn’t famous, Eddie could have found a way to let it go. A couple furtive jerk off sessions in the shower after he got back to New York and the image of Richie’s big hands and wide smile and improbably flattering stubble would fade from his mind.

But Richie was famous, and the internet never forgot.

Eddie lasted three days before giving in and typing ‘Richie Tozier’ into the YouTube search bar. Just seeing Richie in the thumbnails was enough to make Eddie’s heart thud, what the fuck. He had to scroll past a bunch of news videos about Richie's supposed mental breakdown, but after that he landed on some old stand-up.

Before he clicked on the first video, he got up and made sure that the door of his study was locked. Then he turned off the lights and put on a pair of earbuds.

Fake It ‘Til You Make It - ~21,000 words, explicit - It’s that totally relatable situation where the man you’re secretly in love with is a celebrity who just came out and now needs a fake boyfriend to keep himself in the spotlight. Eddie offers to help out of the goodness of his heart and not because he’s insanely fucking jealous.

Eddie froze, breath catching in his throat.

Richie looked...really good.

Bev’s influence was obvious. His hair, which had been unkempt and shaggy, a perfect match for his stoner permakid schtick, was cut much shorter and neater. His formerly unruly stubble somehow now emphasized the sharp cut of his jaw instead of obscuring it.

He wore new glasses, Eddie noticed. Slim silver metal frames instead of his giant, clunky plastic ones. The fitted black sweater and dark blue jeans were simple, but made his shoulders look impossibly broad and his legs miles long.

Fuck everything and Beverly Marsh in particular.

LINK TO MY FIRST SET OF REDDIE RECS 30+ FICS

#reddie fic #reddie #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #fic recs #it chapter 2 #ao3 #rec list #reddie fic recs

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natsunoomoi · 4 years ago

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Oh yeah, addendum to the other post from earlier because I went to bed after I found it, but yeah. I found the spot where it talks about it finally. But just annoyed because I think it was an issue with like textual clean up or my phone browser at the time screwing with me as I went back and forth to the translation notes that it probably wasn't as clearly input into my memory the first time around. I don't have ad blockers on my phone so when I was originally reading it I was having formatting issues that I think distracted my reading sometimes. I still managed to remember quite a lot of details in general for the plot, I think, but I remember it was frustrating to try to get to the end. Checking now on my desktop and the formatting issues are near nonexistent so it's easier to read and jog my memory that oh yeah I did read this part.

But also still annoyed that it's improperly cited on the wiki cuz ugh, that's not how you write a wiki. Proper chapter citations, yo. It is in 81 not 92. *facepalm* Still kind of wondering where that other part I read when I started this book was mentioned? Still haven't seen that at all.

I think also I remember I was a bit more concerned about the overall meaning of what the ending meant too than what Qinghua was saying. Like the way everything turned out in the book it was really sweet and all and I like Qingqiu and Binghe together, but I was and still am really concerned that they only really work as a couple in this book specifically because of the circumstances of the book. I can understand people IRL are repressed or don't think about their own sexuality and maybe discover it later or under the right circumstances, but at the same time the way things unfolded also gives me some concerns. It's more possible that someone who is straight might only think so because it's just the normal accepted type of relationship we see in our modern society so they don't question or explore it so they don't know, but at the same time, I'm also concerned because your sexuality doesn't just change because of one person either. IRL if someone is not into you, they're not into you. I'm a little worried as well that the relationship between the characters is also a little coercive. Like when we're talking about enthusiastic consent IRL it means for all partners and both people in a relationship should thoughtfully respect the other's boundaries and needs, and unfortunately, Binghe tends to not respect boundaries. It makes for good comedy and cuteness in a fictional work, but a lot of young people also read this book and it worries me a bit what some people might learn about relationships in that regard.

Like this maybe a separate thing, but like thinking about the consent in the relationship in this book reminds me of a Reddit post I saw where this one guy was asking for advice about a situation with his gf where his gf would only sleep with him if he put on Sasuke cosplay and she wore Naruto cosplay and basically they acted out her BL fantasy. And like he was very kind and onboard with her roleplay because he wanted her to be happy, but also like when he asked to maybe not do the cosplay, she would get upset and refuse to be intimate with him in any other way. And like, yeah, the situation is very funny, but because this is a real life couple you can see how when only one person bends to their partner's desires and needs, it can leave the other person feeling unheard and empty. As hilarious as it sounds, a lot of people were very sympathetic for the guy and feeling for him cuz like he was doing everything right and giving it a try for her and then also just approaching her maturely and trying to talk about his own comfort in that regard and she wasn't hearing him. So similar to how I feel bad and afraid for that guy, I actually feel kind of concerned and afraid for SY/Qingqiu a little. Like if both of them were my friend IRL, I would legit be worried that Binghe wasn't always listening to Qingqiu's needs. The relationship needs to be an equal give and take or at least balanced, but one side tends to take more and act more selfishly, and it's like, you only feel worried and want them to talk to each other more and grow because you want them to be able to last together.

Still kind of getting into the other books, but in comparison the other relationships in the other two books seem to be more positive and supportive. Like TGCF seems to be the most healthy and functional as an actual relationship.

Also a bit concerned that Airplane's original outline was a teacher x student relationship. Like we can argue it's okay for SY cuz he's not really Qingqiu, but that relationship being the original outline is also risque and that is NG at worst and a huge risk at best. Like it was viewed bad enough already that Qingqiu was written to eye Ning Yingying, it wouldn't be viewed any better if that part of the original outline was in it too. On the plus side the way SVSSS plays out Binghe is an adult already when the situation happens and it is at a more appropriate time, but the optics are pretty bad just because of like ideas of society that a master is like a parent and a disciple is like a child. It's also related to the titles and such that they call each other like shixiong, shidi, etc. They have family dynamics with each other so it's not great. It's not like there aren't some situations IRL where teacher and student become a couple, but in many circumstances it's highly inappropriate. The underage issue is the normal problem. But if they are grown and it is later when you are no longer their teacher I've seen some couples where it worked out, but it's a situation of consenting adults at least. Still a little concerned about the power imbalance dynamics. In IRL situations that's a big thing too. Other than age, one person being able to affect other parts of your life on a whim is a huge stressor on a relationship you don't need. I can kind of understand how it would have worked out in a positive if like Qingqiu had shown empathy for Binghe when they first met because their lives mirror each other's, but like a lot of the other things Qinghua added into the story like the extent of Qingqiu's traumas being played out as asshole behavior became huge barriers. Like I mentioned, with just his traumas it would be very difficult for him to be able to have even a deep friendship with other men, which is similar to how IRL people in real life don't have a chance to explore themselves because of various issues and stuff in society. But also Binghe being ultimately unhappy by just doing what the world thinks he should do and not what he wants on both an in-world level and a meta level. We don't get a whole lot on Shen Jiu, so I'm really curious how that would have actually worked on his end because he seemed really broken, but it's impossible to parse out what of the original plot we can imagine to remove to understand the original outline and how it would have happened. He was very alone and even though the pipa player called him a friend, it doesn't seem like he was able to have a close enough friend to talk with or confide in at all. But is that isolation part of the original outline or part of the PIDW plot?

Anyway, it's things like that that I think about all the time and that's why I end up going into dives into the wiki cuz I want to like think about something and want to check notes real quick to make sure I'm thinking about it right. But the wiki is unreliable. Like also there was one part where it says that the bad cultivation manual was only something the other disciples did to Binghe, but in SJ's POV chapter he literally says that he gave him the shitty one. The wiki also claimed that him pouring tea was also actually an application of medicine misunderstood, but I haven't found any evidence of that either and it's just stuff like that that send me into a rabbit hole that derail me from my original thoughts I'm trying to work out.

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weaselandfriends · 5 years ago

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Hymnstoke Intermission

Andrew Hussie had the courtesy to drop some thoughts on the Epilogues, the full text of which can be found here. As you can probably tell, it’s dense, so I’ll summarize what I consider the key points.

1. Hussie intended the Epilogues to be “conceptually distinct” from the main narrative of Homestuck (i.e., Acts 1 through 7).

2. Hussie intended the Epilogues to set new narrative stakes and establish a way for the narrative to continue (as opposed to the traditional idea of an “Epilogue” as something that resolves what came before).

3. By labeling the Epilogues as “Epilogues” while not adhering to traditional expectations of what an epilogue entails, Hussie intended to prompt readers to question storytelling concepts and the agenda of the storyteller.

4. Hussie intended to cede his authorial control over the Homestuck story and “pass the torch” to the fandom.

5. Hussie intended to prompt the fandom to develop skills like “critical discussion, dealing constructively with negative feelings resulting from the media they consume, interacting with each other in more meaningful ways, and trying to understand different points of view outside of the factions within fandom that can become very hardened over time.”

I actually disagree with several of Hussie’s conclusions, which probably sounds hilariously presumptuous. But if Hussie truly wants the fandom to develop skills in critical discussion, and to foster and understand different viewpoints, while also ceding his authorial control over the work, then his word being “Word of God” has to be called into question. Act 6 of Homestuck already does this; Hussie’s author avatar is literally killed followed by a flash titled DOTA. DOTA, of course, being short for “Death of the Author,” a frequently-cited essay by Roland Barthes that argues that author's intentions can neither be wholly known nor taken as the sole interpretation of a work.

It’s arguable whether Hussie’s shout out to this essay is meant to be an endorsement of its thesis, and I think a claim could be made that the DOTA in Homestuck is inherently parodic; Hussie’s author avatar continues to exist and influence the story even after his “death,” and at times (such as the Meenah walkarounds) the author avatar appears to give direct statements of the author’s intentions behind certain creative decisions. In fact, the DOTA flash itself marks one of the Hussie avatar’s most direct interactions with the story, as it is during this flash that he gives Vriska the Ring of Life.

Even now, Hussie’s actions contradict his claims, at least to some extent; he cedes narrative control and promotes differing critical interpretations at the same time he dumps a tremendous block of text explaining the intentions and goals of his work. An author’s statement on “what the story means” usually affirms his or her control and quashes differing viewpoints, after all. But it’s not something new. Homestuck has always blurred the line behind author and fan. Some of Hussie’s statements I don’t take as major revelations but rather reiterations of themes that have been clear since Act 1.

If you have read my more recent Hymnstoke posts, you can probably guess which of Hussie’s points I disagree with. In particular, I think the Epilogues are too thematically important to Homestuck to be treated with the kind of “take it or leave it”/“canon or non-canon” ambivalence Hussie claims in his post. Or maybe it’s more that I wish it didn’t have that kind of ambivalence? Because his logic is sound; the Epilogues are presented in a way that sets them apart from “Homestuck Proper.” The AO3 fan fiction cover page, the prose, the way they’re organized as a distinct entity on the website, all of these elements contribute to and support Hussie’s claim of separation. Perhaps, then, my counterargument is that the Epilogues shouldn’t have been displayed this way; that they should have been a fundamental part of the story, one that is unquestionably considered “canon.”

Without the Epilogues, the ending of Homestuck is bad. Really bad. Game of Thrones bad. The original ending of Homestuck fails Homestuck on every conceivable level. It’s a poor resolution of the plot, as it relies on a deus ex machina (Alt!Calliope) while leaving tons of smaller narrative elements completely unresolved. It’s a poor resolution of the characters, as most of them wind up being irrelevant (even those given absurd amounts of screen time, like Jake) and their personal issues are resolved off-screen during a timeskip. It’s a poor resolution of the themes, as despite constant statements that one can’t cheat their way to “development,” that is exactly what happens when Vriska is revived and fixes everyone’s problems instantly. It’s a poor resolution of the structure or form, as what was a tightly-wound machine narrative that relied on innumerable tiny parts sliding into perfect order ended with a big dumb fight scene where people just whap each other over and over until the good guys whap hard enough to win. Beyond the fact that the ending is “happy,” I still can’t find much good to say about it even after years of turning it over in my head.

And during the hiatus-strewn period that marked Homestuck’s end, Hussie was noticeably scant on dropping essays about his intentions.

The Epilogues redeem so much of what went wrong with the ending of Homestuck. I won’t delve into the specifics in this post, as I should probably save it for a more comprehensive series of posts about the Epilogues. But from that perspective, it feels to me as though the Epilogues should not be divorced from Homestuck so thoroughly.

But see, my disagreement with Hussie on this point is a bit disingenuous for another reason. Because, like his claims of ceding authorial control, he’s contradictory here too. Consider these points:

1. Hussie intended the Epilogues to be the launching point of future story developments.

2. Hussie, ceding his own control, intended these future developments to be created by the fans.

3. Hussie designed the Epilogues so that the fans could accept or deny them outright, consider them “canon” or “non-canon.”

If the Epilogues are the breeding ground for Homestuck’s future, then that part of the fandom that denies them renders themselves inert. Without the Epilogues, Homestuck is over. It’s done. The window of our Pynchonian party is closed. All life has petered out; no energy enters to sustain it. The Epilogues open the window. Denying the Epilogues kills the story, and thus the fandom; accepting them leaves room open for the future. And if the part of the fandom that rejects the Epilogues withers and dies, that means only the fandom that accepts them will remain. Ultimately, the Epilogues will be considered canon by the Homestuck fandom, because those who disagree will no longer be part of the fandom, at least the active one.

That probably sounds imperious. But it’s not something I want; the people who deny the Epilogues ought to have a voice as well, and nobody is stopping them from providing their opinions. But I have a hard time imagining that people who deny the Epilogues will stick around in a fandom for a work now defined by the Epilogues. As such, many of Hussie’s conciliatory claims fall flat or seem overly idealistic. Can the fandom continue as a divided house on such a fundamental line when future developments to the Homestuck story will be based on the Epilogues? The canonical arguments for which books belonged in the Bible did not end in blithe harmony; one viewpoint prevailed and all schismatics extinguished. Obviously there will be no burnings at the stake over Homestuck canon, but in a world where there are so many options for entertainment, those who do not accept Homestuck’s active element will probably leave of their own volition.

There's also a third option, expressed by one of the commentators on the Reddit thread I link at the beginning of this post.

Here's my suggestion for you, Hussman. Big subversion, you'll like it: Make "Homestuck 2" and then not have anything form [sic] Homestuck in it at all and just make the story you actually want to make.

The Homestuck fandom might die, but the “Hussie” fandom will survive, as long as Hussie himself continues to create art. Before the Epilogues, I often expressed a similar sentiment. I wanted Hussie to get away from Homestuck, make something new, even if it was just something short and far less ambitious than Homestuck. I think Hussie is a strong storyteller and writer in his own right, and he did not merely “get lucky” with Homestuck the way a hack gets lucky when their trashily-written novel strikes a perfect chord with the culture and sells millions. If Hussie does actually intend to cede authorial control and leave Homestuck to the fandom, then what is his next move? Retirement at 40? I hope not.

Those were my hastily-written thoughts on Hussie’s commentary. While at times contradictory, I consider Hussie’s claims and actions in line with themes established throughout Homestuck. But I also question whether his storytelling decisions will be able to achieve the result he desires for the fandom.

Whether he or we can achieve it, I do agree with Hussie’s hope to create a fandom that is smarter, more willing to view the work with a critical lens, to discuss with one another, to understand each other’s viewpoints, to deal with difficult subject matter. I think a lot of people can be scared to delve deeply into a work, either because they only want their entertainment to be light escapism or because they feel gatekept by not knowing a lot about literary criticism as a field of study. Maybe escapism is fine, but it’s not the only use of art. Treat the stories you like as art and really ask yourself what you like about them, what makes them good, and especially what it means that those things make it good. Those questions will serve a fitting substitute for an understanding of postmodern literary trends of the 20th century.

#homestuck #hymnstoke

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actuallynotkira · 5 years ago

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Too young, too dumb....

Dumb? Excuse you? Don’t insult my intelligence.

An IQ test has shown me to be in the 99.9th percentile for IQ. This is the highest result the test I was given reaches; anything further and they'd consider it to be within the margin of error for that test. I'm also pretty good at engineering. I don't have a degree, and other than physics I don't have a better understanding of any aspect of engineering than any actual engineer, but I have lots of ingenuity for inventing new things. For example, I independently invented regenerative brakes before finding out what they were, and I was only seven or eight years old when I started inventing wireless electricity solutions (my first idea being to use a powerful infrared laser to transmit energy; admittedly not the best plan). I have independently thought of basically every branch of philosophy I've come across. Every question of existentialism which I've seen discussed, the thoughts haven't been new to me. Philosophy has pretty much gotten trivial for me; I've considered taking a philosophy course just to see how easy it is. Psychology, I actually understand better than people with degrees. Unlike engineering, there's no aspect of psychology which I don't have a very good understanding of. I can debunk many of even Sigmund Freud's theories. I'm a good enough writer that I'm writing a book and so far everybody who's read any of it has said it was really good and plausible to expect to have published. And that's not just, like, me and family members, that counts strangers on the Internet. I've heard zero negative appraisal of it so far; people have critiqued it, but not insulted it. I don't know if that will suffice as evidence that I'm intelligent. I'm done with it, though, because I'd rather defend my maturity, since it's what you all have spent the most time attacking. The following are some examples of my morals and ethical code. I don't believe in judgement of people based on their personal choices as long as those personal choices aren't harming others. I don't have any issue with any type of sexuality whatsoever (short of physically acting out necrophilia, pedophilia, or other acts which have a harmful affect on others - but I don't care what a person's fantasies consist of, as long as they recognize the difference between reality and fiction and can separate them). I don't have any issue with anybody over what type of music they listen to, or clothes they wear, etc. I know that's not really an impressive moral, but it's unfortunately rare; a great many people, especially those my age, are judgmental. I’m pretty much a pascifist. If someone points a gun at me and I can get out of it without harming them, I'd prefer to do that over killing them. I consider myself a feminist. I don't believe in enforced or uniform gender roles; they may happen naturally, but they should never be coerced into happening unnaturally. As in, the societal pressure for gender roles should really go, even if it'll turn out that the majority of relationships continue operating the same way of their own accord. I'm kind of tired of citing these examples and I'm guessing you're getting tired of reading them, if you've even made it this far. In closing, the people who know me in real life all respect me, as do a great many people in the Reddit brony community, where I spend most of my time and where I'm pretty known for being helpful around the community. A lot of people in my segment of the community are depressed or going through hard times, and I spend a lot of time giving advice and support to people there. Yesterday someone quoted a case of me doing this in a post asking everyone what their favorite motivational/inspirational quote was, and that comment was second to the top, so I guess other people agreed (though, granted, it was a pretty low-traffic post, only about a dozen competing comments). And, uh, I run a pretty good blog. All that, and I think your behavior in this ask was totally assholish. So what do you think, now that you at least slightly know me?

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caden · 6 years ago

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we’ve all frequently busted out the old “I’m not debating you I’m mocking you” line and it’s always very funny and satisfying but like... im starting to be more and more skeptical of that mindset because i think it gets us into some really counterproductive habits. If you run a small personal blog its whatever but for people with more than one or two thousand followers who specifically wanna focus on politics... either debate people or ignore them. Leftism isn’t supposed to be a secret club where we just pass around inside jokes making fun of people with the wrong opinion. It’s fine to have small insular communities, but if your behavior is encouraging inaccessibility and hostility towards outsiders it makes me question what your real goals and values are, or at least how responsibly you’re handling your platform.

Debating fascists generally just spreads their propaganda to a wider audience and doesn’t do much to sway them or their followers-- if a fascist is screaming ‘debate me, debate me!’ unless you have a very comprehensive and strong argument against the shit they’re saying, you can just ignore them. In general I think it’s good to debate when they’re spreading demonstrably false statistics and narratives, but make sure to clearly cite actual proof that what they’re saying is wrong. If you see a bigoted meme or a dogwhistle, signal boosting that stuff doesn’t help-- you’re just giving them what they want, even if you have a three paragraph long response about why it’s bad. It’s fine to ignore them. But, like, ignore them. Spreading reactionary shit and just adding a minor burn on the OP is worse than doing nothing. It gets their propaganda out to all of your followers, and the only substantial counter-argument you’ve put there is one that will only appeal to people that are already 100% on your side. Variants of this are replying with “stfu bootlicker”, screenshotting the hentai on their blog/ their cringey blog description, just saying “learn to read” when people are misrepresenting your argument, a picture of the OP looking like a reddit fedora atheist, essentially any reaction picture but a common example would be the no-brain drooling wojak, etc. Like I know it’s fun but i also think it’s kind of shortsighted of us. Ultimately, it is necessary to educate people, to debunk false narratives, to show people why one answer is right and the other is wrong. And again I’m not saying you should be debating the fascist incel guy who’s posting bad-faith inflammatory horseshit. You’re NEVER debating that guy-- obviously you will never ever make someone over the internet directly admit that they are wrong. But you can convince the dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people reading the post that your argument is the correct one. If you engage in the debate, you’re doing it for the sake of the audience, not to actually sway the other person. And posting leftist in-jokes won’t do anything to win the audience over. Also, obviously no one post is gonna convert someone’s followers from fascism to leftism. It’s only after repeatedly seeing legitimate doubt cast on that flawed ideology that their followers will start to slowly come towards our side, or even just open their minds to the idea that there are other ways of thinking. This goes double if the person you’re debating is liberal or center-left, where they’re actually arguing in good faith and genuinely aren’t that far from being able to understand our point of view.

Smaller personal blogs don’t have a huuuuge responsibility to bother with any of this, but nowadays I pretty wholeheartedly feel that if you have a mildly to considerably large follower base it’s pretty irresponsible to have the attitude of "my goal on here is to make the people with the right opinion feel good that they’re right and the people with the wrong opinion feel bad that they’re wrong”. Just the small change of saying “my goal on here is to state the right opinion in a way that will encourage more people to have that right opinion” would make a tangible difference in what kind of content you output. I’m not trying to promote anyone making themselves less radical, or watering down their ideas to appeal to centrists-- I’m saying you should be in a constant cycle of explaining your goals and ideas in simple, honest terms, and making some effort to do so in a way that’s accessible to as many people as possible.

PS: The one exception to the ‘in-joke memes won’t win people over’ thing is that i DO think some of the semi-coordinated bullying campaigns against right wing shitbags have worked to great effect on here. That’s not me necessarily saying I 100% approve of all of them morally, I do think using targeted harassment as a political strategy is playing with fire... but communismkills (just for example) went from being someone with genuine sway over thousands of people whose opinions were taken relatively seriously to being a TOTAL joke who now actively hams it up just to stay relevant. The “kung pow penis” campaign was slightly less successful in that it was very easy for the guy to spin into ‘the pathetic sjws are targeting me’ and therefore most of his followers quickly sided with him-- ideally, you would want the person’s followers to say ‘watching this dude humiliate himself is embarrassing, maybe i shouldn’t have ever taken him so seriously’.

Anyways, I’ve said this a bunch of times before but I’m having less and less tolerance for people who devote hundreds of hours to arguing on here but rarely say anything substantial past “I’m right because I said so, you’re wrong, the end”.

#maybe a super long post for a non-issue who knows #as always this isnt made with any hard feelings towards friends who are guilty of this just trying to be constructive

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askyaboyrichie-blog · 7 years ago

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richie?

It should be noted that I've upvoted every single person who's disagreed with me here, as far as I know. That said. In 7th grade, I took an SAT test without preparing for it at all, it was spur-of-the-moment, I knew about it about an hour ahead of time and didn't do any research or anything. I scored higher on it than the average person using it to apply for college in my area. An IQ test has shown me to be in the 99.9th percentile for IQ. This is the highest result the test I was given reaches; anything further and they'd consider it to be within the margin of error for that test. My mother's boyfriend of 8 years is an aerospace engineer who graduated Virginia Tech. At the age of 15, I understand physics better than him, and I owe very little of it to him, as he would rarely give me a decent explanation of anything, just tell me that my ideas were wrong and become aggravated with me for not quite understanding thermodynamics. He's not particularly successful as an engineer, but I've met lots of other engineers who aren't as good as me at physics, so I'm guessing that's not just a result of him being bad at it. I'm also pretty good at engineering. I don't have a degree, and other than physics I don't have a better understanding of any aspect of engineering than any actual engineer, but I have lots of ingenuity for inventing new things. For example, I independently invented regenerative brakes before finding out what they were, and I was only seven or eight years old when I started inventing wireless electricity solutions (my first idea being to use a powerful infrared laser to transmit energy; admittedly not the best plan). I have independently thought of basically every branch of philosophy I've come across. Every question of existentialism which I've seen discussed in SMBC or xkcd or Reddit or anywhere else, the thoughts haven't been new to me. Philosophy has pretty much gotten trivial for me; I've considered taking a philosophy course just to see how easy it is. Psychology, I actually understand better than people with degrees. Unlike engineering, there's no aspect of psychology which I don't have a very good understanding of. I can debunk many of even Sigmund Freud's theories. I'm a good enough writer that I'm writing a book and so far everybody who's read any of it has said it was really good and plausible to expect to have published. And that's not just, like, me and family members, that counts strangers on the Internet. I've heard zero negative appraisal of it so far; people have critiqued it, but not insulted it. I don't know if that will suffice as evidence that I'm intelligent. I'm done with it, though, because I'd rather defend my maturity, since it's what you've spent the most time attacking. The following are some examples of my morals and ethical code. I believe firmly that everybody deserves a future. If we were to capture Hitler at the end of WWII, I would be against executing him. In fact, if we had any way of rehabilitating him and knowing that he wasn't just faking it, I'd even support the concept of letting him go free. This is essentially because I think that whoever you are in the present is a separate entity from who you were in the past and who you are in the future, and while your present self should take responsibility for your past self's actions, it shouldn't be punished for them simply for the sake of punishment, especially if the present self regrets the actions of the past self and feels genuine guilt about them. I don't believe in judgement of people based on their personal choices as long as those personal choices aren't harming others. I don't have any issue with any type of sexuality whatsoever (short of physically acting out necrophilia, pedophilia, or other acts which have a harmful affect on others - but I don't care what a person's fantasies consist of, as long as they recognize the difference between reality and fiction and can separate them). I don't have any issue with anybody over what type of music they listen to, or clothes they wear, etc. I know that's not really an impressive moral, but it's unfortunately rare; a great many people, especially those my age, are judgmental about these things. I love everyone, even people I hate. I wish my worst enemies good fortune and happiness. Rick Perry is a vile, piece of shit human being, deserving of zero respect, but I wish for him to change for the better and live the best life possible. I wish this for everyone. I'm pretty much a pacifist. I've taken a broken nose without fighting back or seeking retribution, because the guy stopped punching after that. The only time I'll fight back is if 1) the person attacking me shows no signs of stopping and 2) if I don't attack, I'll come out worse than the other person will if I do. In other words, if fighting someone is going to end up being more harmful to them than just letting them go will be to me, I don't fight back. I've therefore never had a reason to fight back against anyone in anything serious, because my ability to take pain has so far made it so that I'm never in a situation where I'll be worse off after a fight. If I'm not going to get any hospitalizing injuries, I really don't care. The only exception is if someone is going after my life. Even then, I'll do the minimum amount of harm to them that I possibly can in protecting myself. If someone points a gun at me and I can get out of it without harming them, I'd prefer to do that over killing them. I consider myself a feminist. I don't believe in enforced or uniform gender roles; they may happen naturally, but they should never be coerced into happening unnaturally. As in, the societal pressure for gender roles should really go, even if it'll turn out that the majority of relationships continue operating the same way of their own accord. I treat women with the same outlook I treat men, and never participate in the old Reddit "women are crazy" circlejerk, because there are multiple women out there and each have different personalities just like there are multiple men out there and each with different personalities. I don't think you do much of anything except scare off the awesome women out there by going on and on about the ones who aren't awesome. That doesn't mean I look for places to victimize women, I just don't believe it's fair to make generalizations such as the one about women acting like everything's OK when it's really not (and that's a particularly harsh example, because all humans do that). I'm kind of tired of citing these examples and I'm guessing you're getting tired of reading them, if you've even made it this far. In closing, the people who know me in real life all respect me, as do a great many people in the Reddit brony community, where I spend most of my time and where I'm pretty known for being helpful around the community. A lot of people in my segment of the community are depressed or going through hard times, and I spend a lot of time giving advice and support to people there. Yesterday someone quoted a case of me doing this in a post asking everyone what their favorite motivational/inspirational quote was, and that comment was second to the top, so I guess other people agreed (though, granted, it was a pretty low-traffic post, only about a dozen competing comments). And, uh, I'm a pretty good moderator. All that, and I think your behavior in this thread was totally assholish. So what do you think, now that you at least slightly know me?

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brittanyyoungblog · 5 years ago

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Pornography is Dangerous for Teens? Chill Out, The Kids are Going to be (Mostly) Alright

Americans have become increasingly fond of calling pornography a “public health crisis.” Those who claim this frequently cite adolescents’ “rampant access to pornography” as a central concern. Parents are encouraged to panic because “[p]orn is radically undermining the healthy development of children and youth, and contributing to increasing levels of sexual inequality, dysfunction, and violence.” Of critical importance to this view is that the internet has allowed children to access pornography at increasingly younger ages and youth are especially vulnerable to its harmful effects.

Is all of this panic justified, though? Is pornography really as dangerous as some claim?

In early 2018, I was invited to join a group of hard-working sociologists in the Republic of Croatia to help them examine and publish data they had been collecting about adolescents’ pornography use. This was my first serious foray into the academic literature concerning teen porn use, but I tackled the work with gusto. I’ve since been reading and publishing as much as I can about this topic in academic channels; however, I’ve said very little about it in more public forums, where my take on this issue will likely be unsettling to many people because it conflicts with the popular narrative about the damaging effects of porn. When it comes to pornography, I genuinely think that the kids are going to be (mostly) alright.

If you look beyond the rhetoric and take the time to read the actual research, it is very difficult to conclude that adolescents are in a state of crisis because of pornography. Whether we’re talking about pornography’s influence on sexual health, mental / psychological well-being, or rape-supportive attitudes and behaviors, there’s really not a whole lot going on. Sure, there’s tons of research one could cite to make the case that pornography is destroying adolescents, but much this work relies on overly simplified theoretical ideas and poor research practices designed to confirm morally-inspired presumptions about the harms of such materials. Critical analysis and reflection is often absent from this literature and inconsistent findings are typically ignored.

It turns out that the effects of pornography, to the extent that they actually exist at all, are very subtle. So subtle in fact, that when it comes to real-world issues of societal import, like safer-sex, the effects are not consistently detected across studies. A quick review of the literature, for example, indicates that three studies find that pornography-using teens report less consistent condom use than teens who don’t use porn (Luder et al., 2011; Wingood et al., 2001; Wright, Tokunaga, & Kraus, 2016). Further reading, however, indicates that another three studies find no association between pornography consumption and condom use (Braun-Courville & Rojas, 2009; Lim, Agius, Carrotte, Vella, & Hellard, 2017; Sinković et al., 2013). Moreover, recent Croatian research that I was involved in found no evidence that pornography use was associated with decreases in subsequent condom use in two groups of adolescents who were followed over time (Koletić, Štulhofer, & Kohut, 2019).

When it comes to risky sex beyond condom use, the story is essentially the same. Whether we’re talking about condom use, age of first intercourse, or number of sexual partners, we really do not have firm evidence that pornography is clearly or strongly influencing sexual risk behaviors.

Given the modest—at best—and conflicting findings, it shouldn’t be surprising that post-internet adolescents are actually doing better on many markers of sexual risk taking than pre-internet teens. Condom use and age of first intercourse have both increased, while rates of unintended pregnancies and abortions have decreased among teens in the age of unrestricted access to explicit models of risky sexual behaviors. If there are negative impacts on pornography on the sexual health of adolescents, they are clearly not strong enough to counteract these societal trends.

With respect to sexual health (and many other presumed “harms”), porn has become a boogeyman. If you are legitimately worried about the sexual health of teens (and you should be, given the notably high level of STIs in this population), pointing the finger at porn is really a distraction from bigger issues. Research tells us that factors like recreational substance use, “abstinence only” sexual education, over-reliance on hormonal methods of birth control (which only protect against unintended pregnancy and not STIs), and the general lack of parental communication about safer sex, should all be much more concerning to you than teens’ access to online porn.

Now, I often get the impression that people think of me as a porn apologist. I like to think that I’m not, or at least that I try not to be. In this spirit, I am going to suggest an important caveat about my conclusions. Scholars like me, that is, those in fields like psychology, communication science, or sociology, rely heavily on research practices that can only speak to what pornography might be doing “on average,” and can’t really speak to what porn might be doing for any given individual, in any given circumstance.

With this point in mind, while I feel quite comfortable concluding that pornography is relatively harmless for teens “on average,” that doesn’t mean that pornography can’t have harmful impacts for specific people in specific circumstances. Just who those people and what those circumstances are, however, remain largely unanswered questions.

One important circumstance might be the typical lack of comprehensive sexuality education. A point on which we can probably all agree is that pornography should not be the sole or primary source of information about sexuality for kids. Porn is a fictionalized drama, and while many adolescents recognize this, some do not. In a social context of poor sexual education, both within the home and within schools, teens—and adults—who strongly believe that pornography offers an idealized template for sexual interactions are in for a world of problems.

Let me leave you with a metaphor that I use in my human sexuality classes: Imagine if we lived in a world where Driver’s Education was more like your typical Sex Education class, replete with incomprehensible diagrams of the combustion engine and full of curious details like “pistons,” “crank-shafts,” and “exhaust manifolds.” Such complicated and incomprehensible instruction would almost always be accompanied by exposure to explicit visual reminders of the personal and social harms of unsafe driving.

If you were a “lucky” student, a public health nurse might teach you how to properly apply your seatbelt across an oversized stuffed banana that roughly approximates the size and shape of the human body. Most importantly, at no time would you be allowed to look at, handle, or get into a car before you reach a magical and arbitrary age. Even then, you would only be allowed to do so once you’ve made a life-long commitment to a single car, and it would be expected that you would only use it for its intended purpose: to get you off somewhere.

If this was the world in which we lived, illicit movies like Fast and Furious 8—which glorify the glistening curves of the automobile, the ecstatic cries of their engines, and the outright exhilaration of reckless and promiscuous (if a little unrealistic) driving—would give many of us cause for concern. In such a scenario, which of the following do you think best serves the public good: preventing teenagers from seeing a movie intended for adultsorgiving them frank, comprehensive, and effective Driver’s Education?

Thanks to Dr. Taylor Kohut for this guest post! Follow Taylor’s work here.

Want to learn more about Sex and Psychology? Click here for previous articles or follow the blog on Facebook (facebook.com/psychologyofsex), Twitter (@JustinLehmiller), or Reddit (reddit.com/r/psychologyofsex) to receive updates. You can also follow Dr. Lehmiller on YouTube and Instagram.

Image Credits: 123RF/Stas Vulkanov

Check out these other interviews with authors:

How Porn Changes The Way Teens Think About Sex, And Why We Need Porn Literacy

Porn Ed: What Happens When Porn Replaces Sex Education?

How Is Porn Use Linked To Relationship Satisfaction? It’s Complicated

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ellenlucasonlinedatingblog · 5 years ago

Text

Pornography is Dangerous for Teens? Chill Out, The Kids are Going to be (Mostly) Alright

Is all of this panic justified, though? Is pornography really as dangerous as some claim?

Thanks to Dr. Taylor Kohut for this guest post! Follow Taylor’s work here.

Image Credits: 123RF/Stas Vulkanov

Check out these other interviews with authors:

How Porn Changes The Way Teens Think About Sex, And Why We Need Porn Literacy

Porn Ed: What Happens When Porn Replaces Sex Education?

How Is Porn Use Linked To Relationship Satisfaction? It’s Complicated

from MeetPositives SM Feed 4 https://ift.tt/2PJzZVw via IFTTT

#IFTTT #MeetPositives SM Feed 4

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robbiemeadow · 5 years ago

Text

Pornography is Dangerous for Teens? Chill Out, The Kids are Going to be (Mostly) Alright

Is all of this panic justified, though? Is pornography really as dangerous as some claim?

Thanks to Dr. Taylor Kohut for this guest post! Follow Taylor’s work here.

Image Credits: 123RF/Stas Vulkanov

Check out these other interviews with authors:

How Porn Changes The Way Teens Think About Sex, And Why We Need Porn Literacy

Porn Ed: What Happens When Porn Replaces Sex Education?

How Is Porn Use Linked To Relationship Satisfaction? It’s Complicated

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50shadesofbrain · 8 years ago

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Why do we Argue Online?

Hi, welcome to my blog, Fifty Shades of Brain. In case you missed my first post, my name is Tim Carroll and I’m a psychology researcher at Harvard University. The goal of my blog is to provide scientifically rigorous answers to questions about psychology and neuroscience, that don’t already have answers in the literature.

Perhaps the hardest thing about writing a blog about science questions is coming up with the right questions to ask. If you ask too simple a question, you’ll probably be able to find the answer easily online. If you ask too hard a question you’ll find that it’s probably unanswerable.

I found my first Goldilocks question when I was playing an online game called Starcraft 2. If you’re unfamiliar with Starcraft 2, it’s a video game where you control either an army of humans with futuristic technology, an army of aliens that look like they’re from the movie Alien, or an army of aliens that look like they’re from the movie Predator. You then use this army to fight against someone else who’s controlling their own army of Humans, Aliens, or Predators.

However, in between your battles to the death, the game puts you into a chatroom where you can talk to all the other players online about setting up another battle to the death or swap strategy tips for your future battles to the death. The funny thing about this chatroom is that I have literally never seen it used for that wholesome purpose. What people use it for is discussing politics.

In case you spaced out and missed the previous two paragraphs, this is a game about aliens blowing up other aliens. This is about as far from a political discussion group as you can get.

So, I’ve sat and watched these arguments. And while I have seen every political candidate compared to Nazis, communists, socialists, and various other slurs. The one thing I haven’t seen anyone say is, “You’re right, you’ve really changed the way I view things.”

And this isn’t simply limited to Starcraft 2’s lovely userbase. The internet is filled with chatrooms and political discussion forums filled with people who want to do nothing but yell about how great/terrible Trump is to whoever is willing to listen. Sure you can find a few exceptions, like Reddit’s neutral politics but they seem to be the exceptions to a very, very, pervasive rule.

Today on 50 Shades of Brain, I’m going to ask why?

Why do people spend so much of their free time engaging in arguments online when the chance of convincing is so low?

Possibility One: They’re Bored.

While I’m sure this explanation is at least partially right, it can’t be the full explanation. Even if we accept that every person involved in these online arguments is doing so out of boredom, it doesn’t explain why they’re using their computer with a working internet connection to argue rather than look at pictures of baby elephants or check out cool blogs.

Possibility Two: Releasing Pent-up Anger

So let’s say that your job and/or marriage sucks and it leaves you with a lot of feelings of frustration and anger, and all you want to do is get into a fight with someone else and let it out. What better people to do it with then people who are ALSO looking for a fight? In theory this sounds pretty good, two people who want to get into a loud screaming match can get into a loud screaming match without any risk of either of them ending up in the hospital and/or behind bars.

Unfortunately the research doesn’t bear out on this. “Letting out your anger” is what’s known as Catharsis Theory - an idea first proposed by Aristotle and later popularized by Freud. Unfortunately for both Aristotle and Freud, there’s quite a bit of research saying that Catharsis doesn’t exactly work. Punching a punching bag makes you *more* angry not less. See Bushman et al. 1999 or Bushman, 2002., where they tested exactly that. And even if everyone who’s arguing online hasn’t read those papers, you’d expect that most of them would realize that arguing online isn’t reducing their anger.

Unless that’s not what they want to do after all…

Possibility Three: The goal is being angry

A lot of people don’t like this explanation.

Why would people like being angry? It’s a difficult question, one that I don’t exactly have an answer to, but I can say this much, people tend to seek out things that outrage them.

Don’t believe me? Here, take a look at some Fox News articles about Welfare Money.

Now, in case you’re unfamiliar, Fox News is an organization that caters to an audience that largely is against welfare. Now Fox news could show stories that make their base happy (“Look, this state rolled back Welfare.” Or “Look, fewer Americans are on welfare now than ever before.”) But instead Fox News prefers to show its viewers things that will make their blood boil.

While there are a lot of negative things I could say about Fox News, I can’t accuse them of a bad business model. They are providing their viewers and readers exactly what they want.

You see, anger can be addictive. Seriously, there was even an episode of Intervention about it. The earliest paper I can find discussing this phenomenon is Ainslie, 2003, which argues that all emotions are reward-dependent behavior, and that getting angry or at least anticipating getting angry can be almost addictive. The argument is taken a step further by Litvak et al. 2010, who raise the question of whether anger is even a negative emotion at all. Unlike most negative emotions which leave us feeling pessimistic, anger leaves us in an optimistic state. Also most positive and approach-related emotions, like happiness, are processed in the left frontal cortical region, while negative and withdrawal-related emotions, like grief, are processed in the right frontal cortical region. And, despite the fact that most people would consider anger negative, it’s processed on the left side with the other positive emotions. (See Harmon-Jones & Sigelman, 2001 for more information on this particular phenomenon.)

So, despite what we’re telling ourselves, maybe we really do like to be angry.

Now, I like this explanation. But why would someone take the time and mental effort to type up an argument instead of just reading a few headlines on their partisan website of choice? What makes arguing more satisfying ? Well, I have a few theories about that.

Possibility 4: We like to hear ourselves talk

I mean this metaphorically. In the more literal sense people actually tend to dislike the sound of their own voice.

It should be noted, that we are an inherently social species. Pretty huge chunks of our brain are dedicated to interacting with and understanding others (there are so many citations on this statement, it’s hard to know where to start, but I kind of like this paper by Frith & Frith, 2010.) Interacting with humans is believed to be necessary to both normal human development (McNeil et al., 1984) and our continued mental health (Kawachi & Berkman, 2001.) That’s why so many people have likened solitary confinement to a form of torture. Perhaps a part of the fun of argument is actually getting to talk to a – presumably – thinking and breathing human being.

Or perhaps it’s more than that. Humans do tend to love leaving their mark on the world. Seriously, people have been leaving graffiti on walls that say some variant of “I was here” since before the fall of Rome. There’s also some literature that suggests that one of the main appeals of blogging is the ability to express ones identity in a public way. (Gurak & Antonijevik, 2008) Perhaps, arguing online offers a similar psychological reward?

Another consideration is that we just love being right. Or at least perceiving of ourselves as being right. Presumably you wouldn’t engage in a lengthy online argument if you believed yourself to be wrong. And humans love being right. We love being right so much that we process information differently when it confirms what we believe than when it challenges it (See the introduction to Taber & Lodge, 2006 for an overview of this literature.)

Our love of being right also affects our online experience. In fact we like being right so much, that Facebook and Google have started modifying their search results and advertisements in order to show us content that confirms our pre-existing opinions. (Here’s a Ted Talk you can check out on this “filter bubble”) Perhaps arguing online allows us to not only find a person to be angry at, but also to put out an argument and bask in the feeling of being right.

Wrapping up

If I were to combine everything outlined above into one super theory, it would be this. People seek out arguments online so they can feel the almost-addiction-like rush of getting angry as well as the rewarding behaviors of social interaction, identity expression, and being (at least in your own mind) right.

So there are two caveats I’d like to leave you with before I close this blog post down.

The first is this: As with all psychology and neuroscience research, there are difficulties generalizing to every member of the population. I’m sure there are people arguing online at this very second who aren’t motivated by the rush of anger, but instead by an earnest desire to convince others of the rightness of their political view. Conversely, they might also just have an earnest desire to antagonize others.

The second caveat is a little bit of a warning. Up above, I cited the pretty cool research report, Litvak et al. 2010, which focuses on the way that anger affects our judgments and decision making. In addition to being addictive, anger makes us significantly worse at thinking with a clear head. In particular, they say “[Anger] prompts careless thought, not careful thought.” So, even if you spend all night arguing about politics online, it’s unlikely that you’re actually learning anything.

So next time you see an infuriating internet comment, you’d probably be better off leaving it alone. Chances are it isn’t worth your time.

***

Anyway, that’s my first blog post. If you have any thoughts, you can leave a comment below. But, please, for the love of god, try to keep the arguing to a minimum.

#50 Shades of Brain #psychology #neuroscience #science #arguing

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momtaku · 8 years ago

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SnK Chapter 89 Poll Results

This poll closed with 770 entries. It was a lot to go through, but I appreciate the all the support. The poll was posted on Reddit and Tumblr, so I’m hopeful it’s a solid snapshot of how the fandom views the events of chapter 89.

What happened on the roof was too significant a moment for the characters to be completely unchanged by it. Anger, trust issues, grief were cited as factors. Interesting, many people saw the change as a potential positive.

My favorite positive comment:

Change, yes, but not necessarily damage. Their relationships will grow from this just as they have through every other arc.

This comment made me nod my head solemnly:

I REALLY hope so. I hated the serumbowl, but if it happened it might as well have some meaning and not have all the drama be just outta the moment. I wanna believe the characters have a say in where the story goes, and it's not just convenient so the plot can move to where Isayama wants to.

Many respondents noticed a general numbness in Levi’s demeanor. Several want to wait and see. But at this point, only 12.9% of respondents think Levi’s relationship with Eren and Mikasa is permanently damaged.

Levi doesn't seem to care about what's happening around him anymore, i don't think he''ll care about his relationships anymore. He looks like he's even starting to ignore his duties as a soldier.

I was expecting a more emotional response out of Levi but he's still hanging there. A lot of fans think he's much more distant after losing his liege but I feel like this sentiment is often what the fans want to see rather than what is happening? Levi behaves pretty kind to the kids the past few chapters though, even though they played a large part in his decision. Only time will tell I guess but I do wonder about his mental state...

Levi's rationality will help him cope with Erwin's loss in so many ways. On the other hand, his compassion will always make him understand what it's like to be in other people's shoes. After all the revelations, I'm pretty sure he has also considered Eren & Armin's time limit, and how Mikasa is taking it. He has always been that kind of person, rational and strong but never lacking in compassion.

To the mind of many, Hange is far less forgiving than Levi. 73% of respondents think her trust and faith in Eren and Mikasa is damaged, and 26.5% believe it’s permanent.

“Bitter Hanji is my life source. I need her backstory like I need air.”

Despite Hange’s open disagreement with Levi over the serum, 89% of respondents think their relationship will be ok. I agree.

The good news: 70.8% do not think Hange’s being cruel. Hange is stressed, heartbroken and grieving, and that may be making them more short-tempered than normal, but their behavior is not unreasonable.

The bad news: 20% of the fandom think she is being cruel. As someone on Reddit suggested, maybe we should put a fence around them.

I'm sorry for Eren, but also Hanji is really tired right now. She has a different position and has to face a lot of problems and other high ranked heads of the military divisions and making difficult decisions...and they just have not many time.

I loved Hanje in that chapter, I think a lot of ppl don't realise how alone Hanje is in this situation, their situation is even worse than Erwin imo. They have more enemies, less trusting comrades [Levi put his personal feelings 1st and reduce the chances of Humanity surviving...

she is being unreasonable, but i think it's a realistic portrayal of how someone would behave after going through so much like idk why people are acting like her behaviour is unfounded. like im not sayin hanji acted reasonsably, she didnt like she shouldve tried reasoning with eren instead but she obviously got frustrated because of the absolute shit everyones going through right now

From how she behaved during the actual serum bowl (tm) I think it's safe to say Hanji is a very empathetic, understanding and mature person. The problem right now is she doesn't know what Eren is going through and why he is behaving weirdly at this moment,in addition to being frustrated and not being able to understand Levi's decision.

I'm huffy about the Hanji hate... she's so stressed and grieving, people need to cut her some slack

Isayama did good! Despite all our theories, it appears that Ymir was an ordinary girl who was given an extraordinary name. 84.5% of respondents were satisfied with her backstory.

That said, many people think there’s more to the story. Don’t rule out those mystical ties just yet!

Well i know the People of Ymir share weird connections that even surpasses time... That Ymir's dancing titan looked hella like the Devil that gave Ymir Fritz powers.

I'm still expecting more to be revealed. Her past hasn't completely been showed to us and I still believe she's somehow connected to THE Ymir.

About 2/3 of the fandom agree that Ymir is too important for an offscreen death. Big thumbs up from me on this one! For those who think she’s dead, they are side-eyeing the Quadrupedal Titan.

I believe Ymir was eaten to make the Quadrupedal Titan. The way they both stand on all fours makes me believe that. Also, Ymir's disappearance and The Quadrupedal Titan's appearance.

I sometimes think of these polls as an “ask the audience” test since usually the majority is right. That won’t work for the question of whether Reiss and Fritz are the same or a different bloodline. With almost 800 respondents, the fandom is equally divided on this point.

32.6% do not think time travel will be a part of this story. 22.1% do. If time travel is a factor, 48% are ok with that if it’s well written. 30% will be disappointed.

My personal feeling align with this:

I HATE TIME TRAVEL WHY ISAYAMA I TRUSTED YOU Dammit

I’m hopeful if the story goes this way, Yams will pull it off successfully.

Most people believe Eren Jaeger is the source of Kruger’s memory of Mikasa and Armin. The most popular write-in entry was Grisha. In retrospect, I should’ve added him as an option.

Past, present, and future exist simultaneously. Eldians are magically connected, so they can "leak" their memories/thoughts to each other across time. The Coordinate just make this process very efficient.

I’m happy to report that my favorite Commander Handsome is still loved and missed by the majority of the fandom, at least on Tumblr! I was told that most of the 25.7% who disregard him at this point are the Redditors who chimed in :)

He would be 200% more stressed out, with more weight on his shoulders and with 199 new ghosts judging him 24/7.

Because I personally favor the vets, I assume the majority of my tumblr followers do as well. This makes me wonder if the results of these polls are slanted in their favor. This month, however, this wasn’t the case. Fans of the 104th had a nearly equal voice.

Some Final comments

I can’t list them all, but here’s a sample of the final chapter thoughts:

“Reiner looked really handsome this chapter. This is not important but appreciated.”

“I really enjoyed the flashback! I feel like many other major series get boring after the underwhelming reveal (since fans just want to see the series finish after the theories parts are done) but I felt like snks "truth" lived up to its hype.”

“Nobody's talking about the men who venerated Ymir have the same clothes as the people from the wall cult ...”

“Eren aknowledged Mikasa's existence! Yay!!”

“Jean acting as Hanji's assistant--make Moblit proud man! You go Jean, let those leadership qualities shine! :P”

“I'm worried that Eren won't trust others with the information about Dina, and that withholding the information will have bad consequences :/”

“The utter lack of focus towards what happened between Armin and Bertholdt and Armin's new powers is so bizarre to me. Like really, Bert's death has been so poorly handled.”

“Where's Annie”

“pls let ymir be alive and gay”

“Recent reveals have been great, I hope the characters will start to take action with what they know soon.”

“More heart-break and intrigue, but this is Attack on Titan so what else is new, lol!”

“Mindblown since 5 chapters^tm, give me the Ackertalk and some love for Mikasa and Levi-they look both done af and bring Ymir back”

“I'm so loving the latest chapters & these info reveals. So complex & cast may qs abt humanity's nature. Everyone can be right or wrong, evil or good depending on the perspective. I do strongly believe there's hope & the cycle will be broken. most likely, Eren would sacrifice himself somehow.”

“I hope that Mikasa's weight loss isn't just a throw away line and that she gets treated more like a main character. Oh and that we finally get the Ackertalk!”

“Levi looks so done...”

“For the love of everything can we please have these characters talk to each other. Eren talk to Mikasa, Mikasa talk to Levi, Levi talk with Hanji just open up the thought chambers. Lord. We've been waiting on ackertalk for 84 years...”

#snk chapter 89 #snk poll #snk 89 #snk analysis #thank you everyone!

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tigereye771 · 8 years ago

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“THOSE” GoT Spoilers, Let’s Not Talk Content, Let’s Talk Behavior & Action

I’ve been seeing a lot of Jon & Sansa fans bemoaning the state of season 7 of Game of Thrones before it airs due to “spoilers” that were posted in October on Reddit and subsequent “additional information”. I think a lot of people may be taking these “spoilers” more seriously than they deserve to be. First, this post is not really about the spoilers themselves, hence my title of “Let’s Not Talk Content.” I’m writing this because it stems from several conversations I’ve had with a fellow fan and she’s asked me to put my thoughts out there. I’m not so much interested in discussing what the “spoilers” say, but the behavior and action around the spoilers. What do I mean by that? I mean that there’s a chance the “spoilers” may not be 100% accurate or downright wrong because the whole scenario does not fit in with past actions of certain parties and how people would act in a given situation.

I’m also going to provide some disclaimers in that I have no inside knowledge, I’m probably a casual fan at best, and I do like the idea of Jonsa and Sansa is my favorite character. I do not religiously follow spoilers or news, but I do read some/listen to interviews and read articles (but I do not hunt down every single thing, if something comes across the various outlets I follow like Entertainment Weekly, I will likely read it). If you think that makes me biased in some way, perhaps, but it also provides me with the ability to not get lost in the forest of the spoilers themselves and look at the situation itself: the fact there are leaks.

If you want to read more, I’ve included a cut because while this is not about the content of the “spoilers”, I am going refer to them and some other stuff so I want to make sure I don’t inadvertently tell someone something they rather not know. What follows are completely my own opinion and thoughts.

I read the initial October “spoilers” once and dismissed them because my understanding was they were from an unknown source who had not posted on Reddit before. Additionally, I’m not a Reddit user so I’m not exposed to what goes on there, but I was surprised by how many people accepted these “spoilers” to be true. Why is that? The reason given was that photographs taken during filming support the “spoilers” and the subsequent additional “spoilers” (which I am not clear on if they are from the same original source or a different source and I have not read or heard of them so I’m not quite clear as to what they say) are supported by these photographs.

Now, I’ve seen these photographs, and with the exception of a few things, I think some of them would have been very obvious things for Season 7 if the “spoilers” did not exist. For example:

· Jon & Dany meeting – Well, there are 13 episodes left, it would seem to move story along there was a high possibility of them meeting and not being left to the last 6 episodes for that to happen.

· Jon & Theon reuniting – Well, in Season 6 Theon and Yara just allied themselves with Dany so if Jon meets Dany, high likelihood of Jon also reuniting with Theon

So I don’t see how any of this is “proof” the “spoilers” are accurate (I should also say that I can be very skeptical about a lot of things and in my work, I’m constantly telling my staff that when you make a claim or cite a number you better have a source to back that up. So I naturally demand a high level of proof, perhaps more so than other fans). What is also a possibility is: couldn’t the “spoilers” have been written to match what would be photographed? That would mean that the “spoilers” were planted information by someone connected to the show. Is that possible?

I posted it in my feed when it first appeared, but on October 27, 2016, Entertainment Weekly’s James Hibberd who writes about GoT wrote an article saying don’t believe all those spoilers you’re seeing (http://ew.com/article/2016/10/27/game-thrones-season-7-spoilers-leaks/). Why should we pay attention to this article? What does EW know? Maybe EW is trying to help GoT cover up a leak and throw people off. Does EW really know anything?

Let’s take the first that EW is helping a scrambling GoT cover up a massive leak. Would they really provide that help or would GoT had even approached EW to help them cover up the leak? Maybe, but I think the chances might be slim on either end because one thing about EW makes me think they’re saying don’t believe all the “spoilers” because EW might actually know what some of the storyline is and the “spoilers” are at least inaccurate in some respects. How would they know that? I think EW might have been there for some of the filming in Spain and likely DO know some of the storyline for Season 7. If you listen to EW’s end of Season 6 podcast, I think it was Hibberd who said he was there for the filming of BotB and knew Rickon died and he had to keep quiet all that time before the episode aired. Additionally, if you read the article on Kit Harington in the EW issue where he was on the cover with the title “He’s Alive,” the author of that article (I think it was Hibberd again), talks about the filming of BotB. So we know EW visits the filming of GoT and has got to know about what’s going to take place in the upcoming season. It just also makes sense logistically because they have to write articles for publication so they need to have some lead time in information.

Going back to the article I linked, EW also notes that GoT is known for pulling “pranks” and misleading people by having cast on set to make it look like they’re filming certain scenes only for it to be a misdirect. Alexander Siddig also said he thought a few seasons past that the leak of certain episodes was a calculated move by HBO and the show itself. So it may not be too farfetched to think they planted “spoilers”. Afterall, wasn’t the original “spoiler” poster someone who had never posted to Reddit before and then soon after deleted the posting?

So, are all these photos and the “spoilers” an elaborate misdirect by the show? I do not think it can be discounted that they are. These people are not stupid. They know that by filming in open areas, there were bound to be photographers taking pictures of them or at least the possibility of that happening. But why go through all this trouble? Just to mess with fans? Or something else?

I think “something else” could be a reason and that reason might be to keep GoT an ongoing topic of conversation and the interest up. With the later start date, there might be the concern that interest might wane in the show as fans turn their attention to other shows. Additionally, GoT has some competition now. Westworld, Stranger Things, This is Us, all new shows that have gotten a lot of “chatter” around them, not to mention awards. There could be concern that because they will be airing a little later than usual, that GoT might lose a step or two, so keeping their fanbase guessing and talking keeps the momentum up.

But let’s just go ahead and discount all of what I just wrote and say none of it applies. I have to say the action around these “spoilers” do not make sense given D&D and HBO’s history around spoilers. GoT has always been protective about protecting information. How many times have you seen actors mention about the precautions taken about protecting scripts and information? Yet, we suddenly have an ENTIRE season leaked? Has that EVER happened for any show, let alone a show that historically has been so fiercely secretive? It does not seem realistic that such a huge leak should happen now when GoT likely has a pretty good system in place for protecting their information.

Even if we say the original October “spoilers” are correct, why weren’t the leaks plugged for the subsequent “spoilers”? You have this massive leak on your show and you don’t hunt down the person(s) responsible? You don’t take great precautions to ensure no more information is released? Logically, it makes no sense.

Well, someone may argue it’s because they don’t care or less said is better to not give the “spoilers” credence. Okay, let’s say GoT, because it’s winding down, they really don’t care if there are leaks. Fine, then why not release your actors to say a little more about what’s going to happen? The most we got is Iain Glenn saying certain characters are going to be meeting which I think a few other actors have mentioned too. Again, logical occurrence for a show with only 13 episodes remaining, not really a spoiler. An “official” type of spoiler coming from an actor on the show, would definitely be picked up by more media outlets than something posted on Reddit by an unknown entity and I can imagine would have a greater impact on fan chatter.

What about the other argument of if they don’t talk about it, we’re not giving any validation to the “spoilers” which are true? I’m thinking of pre-Season 6 when people spotted Kit Harington when Season 6 was being filmed and everyone started saying Jon Snow is alive. What happened? D&D and HBO came out and said, “Oh, he’s just being filmed as a corpse. Jon Snow is dead.” Which was all true, but it wasn’t the whole truth. So it’s not like they haven’t addressed a “leak” in some way before with a bit of a misdirect. But we have official radio silence so far, from what I can tell. So maybe they are “planted” information by the show or the lack of response from GoT might be because the “spoilers” didn’t originate from them but from some outside source just making up stuff and so far from being true that they don’t need to say a word.

One last thing that to me makes all of these “spoilers” suspect. A while back on Watchers on the Wall they posted a photo that some visitor had shot when visiting the set. It was of Dany’s throne room at Dragonstone. What struck me was that it was a perfectly framed, clear shot. It wasn’t a picture someone had illicitly taken, sneaking in a shot before someone catches you doing something you shouldn’t. The photographer, stood there, lined up the shot and took it. So unless they allowed a visitor to wander around unaccompanied on their set, I can’t imagine a visitor being allowed such liberty and NOT having been asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement of some kind (any picture of information you saw in your visit today you agree not to mention or share, or at least without prior authorization by GoT, that type of thing). Again, it doesn’t make sense. But if they allowed that photo be taken and were okay for it to be released that tells me one other thing: GoT still wants to control the dispensing of information for S7. Which means they do still give a damn about what information gets out there.

So what do all of these October “spoilers” and subsequent follow-up “spoilers” mean? Is it just about being relevant or something else? Maybe it’s about being relevant, maybe it’s also about muddying up the waters to confuse fans on what may actually happen. Maybe somebody was fed false information and put it out there. Maybe it’s the show putting it out there. Or maybe it’s all been made up by someone who wants to wind up the fanbase. I’m also not discounting there might be some truth in some of those spoilers because the best way to get people to believe something is to make sure it’s a little bit true or possible. All I’m saying is there shouldn’t be a wholehearted acceptance of these “spoilers”. To me at least, the all of the stuff going around the “spoilers” don’t add up to a logical story. People will believe and do what they want, but I don’t think there’s much to get wound up about right now.

Either way, I’m reserving judgment for now. And if you made it to this point, thanks for sticking with it!

#got7 jonsa jon X sansa jon snow x sansa stark spoilers

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legit-scam-review · 6 years ago

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What You Should Know About Craig Wright

Recently, it was revealed that Craig Steven Wright, one of the most controversial figures in the crypto community, had filed 114 blockchain patents since 2017. He also quit Twitter, where he would often publish his opinions on anonymity (bad), Bitcoin SV (the real Bitcoin) and other cryptocurrencies (also bad).

He is also known for arguing that he is actually Satoshi Nakamoto, the original creator of Bitcoin. Here’s the complete list of things you should know about Wright.

Wright’s bio is really rich, but hardly verifiable

He was born in October 1970 in Australia, according to registration papers of one of his many companies. As per a Business Insider article citing his now-edited LinkedIn profile, Wright graduated from Brisbane’s Padua Catholic College in 1987. In the early 1990s, he worked as a sauce cook, “having trained in French cuisine,” and spent three years working with a catering company.

Wright was reportedly studying at the University of Queensland while working as a chef. He initially attended engineering classes, but switched to computer science in his fourth year.

In 1996, as per his earlier LinkedIn bio, he began working at Ozemail, where he was “managing a bunch of engineers,” thus starting his eventful career in tech. However, according to a 2007 Computerworld article, he began working in IT when he joined K-Mart in 1985 — which would have been even before he finished high school.

In April 1997, Wright says he joined the Australian Stock Exchange, maintaining security and firewalls. In November the same year, he launched a company called DeMorgan, described as “a pre-IPO Australian listed company focused on alternative currency, next generation banking and reputational and educational products with a focus on security and creating a simple user experience.”

In fact, up until July 2015, Morgan was the CEO of about 15 companies. As the Guardian points out, in the space of a week, he resigned as director from Cloudcroft Pty Ltd, Coin-Exch Pty Ltd, Daso Pty Ltd, Demorgan Holdings Pty Ltd, Demorgan Ltd, Denariuz, Ezas Pty Ltd, Integyrz Pty Ltd, Misfit Games Pty Ltd, Interconnected Research Pty Ltd, Zuhl Pty Ltd and Pholus Pty Ltd, and remained the director of just three companies: Hotwire Preemptive Intelligence Pty Ltd, Panopticrypt Pty Ltd and Hotwire PE Employee Share Plan Pty Ltd. Currently, his LinkedIn only features a startup called nChain, where he has allegedly been working as a “chief scientist” since June 2015.

Wright seems to be a man of libertarian views. According to the Cypherpunk mailing list archive, in September 1996, Wright wrote that he had developed cancer during his years at university and took a loan to pay for medical treatment because the health insurance didn’t cover it. He then mentioned that he served in the military and worked at a gas station “even though I am an engineer,” adding:

“So why and for what reason should I have to pay several 10’s of thousands each year to support others. I have never taken help from the government, I do not feel I should have to pay as well. And what am I paying for…to protect the status quo. I believe that there is more than enough help for ppl available. They just need to get off their butts and work.”

In sum, Wright’s biography seems to be considerably replete and busy — or, at least, he portrays it that way. On top of having two PhDs, Wright wields numerous certifications in computer forensics and information technology (IT). In February, he published two Medium articles in which he claimed to have worked as an “agent of influence” in Venezuela and Colombia. Picturing himself as a James Bond-esque character fighting terrorism and evil, Wright says he was “shot twice” during the operation. Also, at some point, he claims that he “was a pastor once.”

According to his story, the Australian entrepreneur came back from South America to witness Bitcoin — which he created (more about that below) — being used on the darknet.

“I discovered the creation I had given birth to, something I designed to bring light was being used for all the worst reasons. Not only drugs, but people. Anonymity is a curse. Nothing good comes of it.”

Wright has several times claimed that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, and refused to provide sufficient proof

Wright become a known figure in crypto community after media reports linking his identity to Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, surfaced in late 2015. Previously, in 2014, one of his few reported links to cryptocurrencies was that he tried launching the world’s first Bitcoin bank.

Thus, in December 2015, Wired and Gizmodo reported within hours of each other that the Australian computer scientist and entrepreneur might be the creator of the world’s largest cryptocurrency.

The Wired story claimed that Wright “either invented bitcoin or is a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did.” It was based on documents and emails that were purportedly leaked by “an anonymous source close to Wright” to an independent security researcher Gwern Branwen, who co-wrote the article with Wired author Andy Greenberg.

Similarly, Gizmodo ran a story that featured documents allegedly obtained by a hacker who accessed Wright’s email accounts, claiming that Satoshi Nakamoto was a joint pseudonym for Craig Steven Wright and his friend, computer forensics analyst and cybersecurity specialist David Kleiman, who died in 2013.

Moreover, on the same day the articles were published, Australian Federal Police (AFP) raided Wright’s house in the Sydney suburb of Gordon. However, the AFP clarified that the operation was not related to the Bitcoin claims.

A substantial part of the evidence presented in the reports — along with Wright’s previous claims — was soon proved false. First, Wright’s company Cloudcroft had declared to have two supercomputers, one of which allegedly produced by computer manufacturer SGI. However, SGI soon clarified that “Cloudcroft has never been an SGI customer and SGI has no relationship with Cloudcroft CEO Craig Steven Wright.”

Further, Wright had listed two PhDs on his LinkedIn page, including one from Charles Sturt University. Eventually, Forbes contacted the university and found out that it hadn’t granted Wright any PhDs, although it gave him three master’s degrees in networking and systems administration, management (IT), and information systems security. Wright was, however, awarded with a doctorate degree by Charles Sturt University later in 2017.

Also, a technical analysis of two PGP public keys attributed to Wright, but also linked to Satoshi Nakamoto, showed that they were created more recently than the documents in which they were featured.

Finally, a number of posts in Wright’s now-deleted blog that seemed to portray him as a person who was directly involved in Bitcoin’s creation had been backdated or edited; the archived versions of the posts from 2013 show none of those breadcrumbs that Wright could have planted to mislead the media into thinking he is Satoshi.

After the aforementioned stories went live, Wright promptly took down his social media accounts and disappeared for several months. On May 2, 2016, he came back (he now lives in London, United Kingdom, according to his LinkedIn profile) and publicly declared that he is the creator of Bitcoin. Later on in the same month, Wright published a sentimental apology piece where he refused to publish the proof of access to one of the earliest Bitcoin keys, saying he doesn’t have the “courage” do it.

However, Wright still claims to be the pseudonymous Bitcoin creator. Just last month, the entrepreneur filed two near-identical comment letters to the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in which he again declared that he is Satoshi. The documents were submitted in response to the agency’s request for industry input and feedback on Ethereum’s (ETH) mechanics and market.

Specifically, Wright wrote that he worked “under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto,” and “completed a project […] started in 1997 that was filed with the Australian government in part under an AusIndustry project registered with the Dept. of Innovation as BlackNet.”

BlackNet — an alleged precursor to Bitcoin — was submitted to the Australian government in 2001, according to one of Wright’s tweets (he deleted his Twitter profile earlier this month).

On Reddit, user Skoopitup argued that the BlackNet paper that Wright supposedly submitted in 2001 largely copied the official Bitcoin white paper (published October 2008), which notably contained significant corrections to an earlier draft that had been shared by Satoshi earlier in August 2008.

In his remaining comments to the CFTC, Wright wrote:

“The amount of misunderstanding and fallacious information that has been propagated concerning bitcoin […] has resulted in my choice to start to become more public. The system I created was designed in part to end fraud as best as that can be done with any technology. The lack of understanding […] has resulted in […] a dissemination of old scams.”

The Australian entrepreneur still hasn’t signed a message with the key associated with Bitcoin’s genesis block, which could be seen as strong evidence of him actually being Satoshi Nakamoto.

Wright played a key role in the BCH hash wars — and now claims that Bitcoin SV is the original Bitcoin

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is a cryptocurrency that emerged on Aug. 1, 2017 after departing from Bitcoin’s original blockchain via a hard fork in an attempt to manage its scalability issue.

The BCH network performs hard forks as part of scheduled protocol upgrades. The fork scheduled for Nov. 15, 2018, however, was disrupted by a competing proposal that was not compatible with the original roadmap. As a result, the BCH community was split into three fractions: Bitcoin ABC, Bitcoin Unlimited and Bitcoin SV.

Craig Wright lead the Bitcoin SV team, whose goal was to restore “the original Satoshi protocol” by changing the current BCH structure. Specifically, that involved entirely overwriting the network scripts of Bitcoin ABC and increasing the block size of BCH from 32MB to a maximum of 128MB in order to increase network capacity and scale. Bitcoin SV’s cryptocurrency design was made by Wright’s nChain company.

At some point, after Jihan Wu, co-founder of major crypto miner and manufacturer Bitmain, who supported the Bitcoin ABC team, accused Wright of being a Blockstream spy and a “fake Satoshi.” In response, the computer scientist entered a verbal fight. Specifically, Wright tagged Roger Ver — another ABC proponent — and Bitmain with bankruptcy threats and accusations of being engaged in Silk Road machinations and child pornography.

Even though Bitcoin ABC essentially won the so-called “hash wars” and secured the original BCH ticker, Bitcoin SV lives on. In late February, Bitcoin SV’s value rose 20 percent, driving it into the top-10 largest cryptocurrencies by market cap. As of press time, Bitcoin SV is the 12th-largest token, with a market cap of $1.5 million, according to CoinMarketCap.

Craigh Wright has a lot of blockchain patents

According to the publication Hard Fork, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has published 155 patents applications filed by Wright — all of which were submitted through his company nChain. Thirty-five of those were published this year. The earliest document date relates to Aug. 31, 2017.

The majority of those applications mention blockchain. Specifically, Hard Fork writes, the term “blockchain” was used 114 times in patent titles. “Cryptocurrency,” in turn, is only featured six times, while “Bitcoin” is not mentioned at all.

Wright has written about his patents quest via Twitter (which has been deleted). According to the screenshots cited by Hard Fork, Wright decided to file his patents in Europe because it was “harder”:

“Once we have the EU, we have the PCT [Patent Cooperation Treaty] in the USA. The US is simpler.”

The Patent Cooperation Treaty has been signed by 152 countries. After filing one international patent application under the PCT, applicants can get simultaneously protection for their inventions in many countries.

As per Bloomberg, business-wise blockchain patents “are an essential ingredient for companies looking to reshape the financial services industry or spawn profitable cryptocurrency-related businesses.” Basically, such patents help companies attract investment, protect property rights and collect monopoly profits from other companies using their inventions.

It’s been argued that Wright is filing patents without the intent of actually using them, but instead to demand large payouts from companies which happen to use similar technologies in their line of work. As Marc Kaufman, an attorney who co-chairs the Blockchain Intellectual Property Council at the U.S. Chamber of Digital Commerce, told Fortune:

“His tactics and activities have all the marks of being a patent assertion entity or what’s pejoratively known as a troll. I’m not aware of his companies having any products.”

Craig Wright is being sued for at least $1 billion

In February 2018, the estate of David Kleiman — Wright’s associate and computer forensics expert who died in April 2013 seemingly of natural causes related to complications from a MRSA infection — brought the suit against Wright to the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Florida. The estate is represented by Ira Kleiman, David’s brother.

According to court documents that surfaced on Reddit, the plaintiff claims that Wright stole hundreds of thousands of BTC, worth over $5 billion dollars at the time, from David Kleiman’s estate. The statement by the plaintiff alleges that Wright recognized that Kleiman’s friends and family were initially unaware of the wealth he accumulated.

Specifically, the statement reads, Wright “forged a series of contracts that purported to transfer Dave’s assets to Craig and/or companies controlled by him. Craig backdated these contracts and forged Dave’s signature on them.”

Wright contacted Kleiman’s estate after his associate’s death and disclosed that he and David had worked together to develop blockchain and Bitcoin, according to the plaintiff.

In December 2018, new documents were published online, indicating that the court had rejected repeated requests from the nChain chief scientist to dismiss the lawsuit.

In an amended lawsuit supported by Judge Beth Bloom, a figure of 300,000 BTC ($1.5 billion as of press time) was now circulating.

“The Court finds that Plaintiffs have sufficiently alleged a claim for conversion,” the court document confirms, continuing:

“The Amended Complaint alleges that Defendant converted at least 300,000 bitcoins upon Dave’s death and transferred them to various international trusts, which was an unauthorized act that deprived the Plaintiffs of the bitcoins therein. Accordingly, Plaintiffs’ claim for conversion […] survives Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss.”

In March 2019, Jeff Garzik, one of the earliest contributors to the Bitcoin codebase, was reportedly subpoenaed by the court for documents relating to the Kleiman vs. Wright complaint.

Specifically, the court demanded “all documents, communications, and agreements that support his [Jeff’s] personal theory that Dave Kleiman is Satoshi Nakamoto.” In a 2018 interview with Bloomberg, Garzik suggested that Dave Kleiman was the original creator of Bitcoin.

Wright doesn’t have a particularly good relationship with crypto community

After some of the aforementioned inconsistencies related to Wright’s claim that he is Satoshi surfaced, the crypto community became increasingly skeptical about the Australian computer scientist. However, some of his claims in regard to other cryptocurrencies certainly didn’t help.

In January 2019, for instance, he called Andreas Antonopoulos, author of the book “Mastering Bitcoin,” a “shitcoin expert.” In February this year, Wright told CNBC Africa’s Ran Neuner in a rather rude form that he knows how to deanonymize and destroy privacy coins Zcash and Monero, which he apparently is going to do “sometime this year”:

“If you have a privacy coin, I will show you that it is basically as private as running through Times Square with your pants around your ankles.”

In October 2017, in a now-deleted tweet, Wright argued that the Lightning Network was “oversold.”

At the 2018 Deconomy conference in Seoul, South Korea, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin publicly questioned Wright’s competence, calling him a fraud.

“Given he makes so many non-sequiturs and mistakes, why is this fraud allowed to speak at this conference?”

In response, Wright tweeted: “Oh well…. looks like I broke Vitalek… He is a twig.. must remember to be gentle next time ….”

Last week, the Australian entrepreneur deleted his Twitter page after removing over 10,000 tweets.

On March 17, not long before erasing his presence on the social media outlet, Wright tweeted that he will be “taking action aggressively to remove any site that is in error or makes false claims,” referring to people calling him a fraud, among other things.

“You do not have a right to lies under ‘free speech’ nor harassment, nor libel and slander,” he wrote. “If an error is reported in a malicious context concerning me, expect to be living in a barrel when we finish with you.”