#I'm really concerned about the lack of political literacy going on here (more so than the media literacy even if they are connected)

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Ppl who can't just enjoy an evil character, and think it's a moral failing if anyone else likes that character are exhausting, and I'm pretty sure slept through any lesson about literary understanding.

Yeah. I mean, it's fine not to enjoy evil characters, or any kind of character, for any reason! But... Yeah, while I don't love that trend of groups accusing each other of lacking media literacy because I feel like it often obscures the core disagreement and any difference of perspective people may bring to the table while both having genuinely interesting points to bring up, it does become pretty exhausting to be morally scrutinized about extremely tame opinions about extremely tame characters.

To me, liking Ganondorf is like... barely above liking Bowser in terms of moral despicability? Not to equate the two at all, as they are very different beasts, but we are talking about a videogame villain made to vaguely scare off children/give them a thrill about feeling like a hero. At the end of the day, this is the purpose Ganondorf serves in the story: being the fairytale evil king that you can defeat and still feel good about yourself (then Wind Waker arrived etc etc but even then, he served that purpose and extremely well even in Wind Waker).

But I don't want to underplay the weight of what I'm generally saying on this blog either and I don't want to hide behind "lol it's just a game for children" when it's an argument I hate to see deployed to undermine other people's feelings about the series. I do come at this character with loaded language and pretty heavy terms, and I'm not sure I would have gotten this kind of hostility if I had just twirled my hair like the rest of the (much more reasonable and less invested) internet, and kept some terms I have used (justifyingly so imho) out of my virtual mouth. It can provoke. It's meant to. I understand these feelings can take some strange shapes when they lash out undigested.

THAT BEING SAID.

Okay, sure. You want me to acknowledge the evil bad guy is evil? Okay! Let's do it, right now. Ganondorf commits atrocities. He does weirdly specific and horrible things to the gorons. He kills people and he kills half-gods. He is tyrannical. He is a conqueror and a warlord. He is a thief. He is self-obsessed and entitled. He beats up kids. He practices necromancy. He terrorizes his followers. He lies and manipulates. If you look closely he is even associated with, like.... the devil....? like maybe there's even "demon" somewhere in his title card?

Okay. Very bad. Evil. Horrible nasty man. Weird eyebrows. Arguably weird name. One star. Blocked and reported.

Okay.

...now what?

Like, what do we do from this point on? What did we learn? What did we ponder upon? What touched us, or moved us, or made us see the world in a slightly new light? Are we reassured? Do we sleep any easier at night?

I know it doesn't always have to be the point of art, to question everything constantly. You can go to art for reassurance and simplicity and easy, comforting thrills --and Zelda is great at doing this as a series, it's a huge part of why I love it. It feels safe, and that's such a nice thing to rely upon! And you can stop there!!! It's allowed!!!!!!

But if you go out of your way to shame people investing and questioning this piece of fiction they love in their own way because it threatens your moral safety and the simplicity of your relationship to that media (and/or the world at large)? That becomes a you problem my (gender neutral) guy, and by that I mean: you becoming a problem for others to deal with, regardless of Circumstances.

[vergess]

Oh YOU'RE the one who put all these white monolinguals in my inbox.

So, first of all, I am in fact the disabled ESL speaker you people keep using as your hypothetical. I've got the whole package baby: non fluent parents, didn't start English until school, had a physical speech disability, had several learning disabilities, the whole nine yards. Not that any of that was relevant to the post.

So you can, politely, take your conscientiousness reminder about my existence, and shove it firmly into a garage. I'm good. I'm capable of remembering I exist, thanks.

Secondly, if you were paying attention to this discussion about how adults under 30 have been FAILED BY. THE. EDUCATIONAL. SYSTEM. You might then be able to extrapolate that this system is failing other English language learners too!

But okay, let's say your concern is genuine, which is VERY hard to believe after the day you, personally have put me through with your white knighting about fluency:

The same solutions work for disfluencies from lack of familiarity with the spoken language too! Wow!

It's almost like ALL OF THE SOLUTIONS PRESENTED HEREIN WOULD LIKEWISE SOLVE THE PROBLEMS YOU RAISED

ALMOST AS THOUGH

bear with me here

ALMOST AS THOUGH A DISABLED IMMIGRANT WROTE THE FUCKING POST WITH FIRST HAND FUCKING EXPERIENCE TO BACK IT'S FUCKING RESEARCH

As for the fucking questions, not that I feel inclined to give you a goddamn answer at this point:

Do these US literacy statistics account for ability to read and write in any language, or just American English?

No. The statistics are based on school child and adult testing. ESL students are usually part of the main student body among children, and in separate schools entirely among adults, thus they are not readily identifiable in the data.

the states with the lowest literacy appeared to be, areas with high concentrations of immigrants from non-English-speaking countries

No state in the US is actually at a reasonable literacy level, so I'm not sure why some being worse is of note to you, but the correlations as they exist are stronger with population density than other factors, as is often the case with any map based visual.

would literacy not be improved by accommodating that section of the population instead of calling them blanket illiterate?

Yeah, no shit it would. That's why all the fucking solutions presented are equally useable for learning English as a second language.

Or do you mean we should have a more multilingual society in the US, because obviously I fucking agree, but that's not really relevant to a post about how CHILDHOOD EDUCATION HAS FAILED AN ENTIRE GENERATION OF PEOPLE.

So 55% of that actually represents >10% of all US adults. Not that this isn't still a lot, but it's far less eye-catching than "55%."

Did ya… look at the source you claim you are correcting, mate?

Did you?

Did you look at the source data that can be filtered to show all ages, which puts national literacy at 46% across age groups, which you may recognize as 54% illiteracy?

54% or all US adults across all age groups, worse for the youngest and eldest, with the best literacy being middle aged people?

Or did you just see the 55% for my age group, and go haring off without checking anything you said?

May I ask why that age range is the one you chose to focus on, op?

I AM THAT AGE.

I know you want this to be a case of "boomer yelling at kids for nothing" but it's my LITERAL OWN LIFE as backed by the FINEST STATISTICAL DATA ON THE SUBJECT ON ALL OF THE PLANET EARTH.

This data extends back decades. It is collected for the UN.

Do you genuinely believe your back of the napkin math based on literally not even looking at the source data makes you a better statistician than everyone who studies this field professionally and has for decades?

You literally just made up a bunch of crap, and you want me to believe you're asking any of these questions in good faith?

Quick question, genuine question:

Why on earth does "more than half of US adults under 30 cannot read above an elementary school level" not strike horror into the heart of everyone who hears it?

Are the implications of it unclear????

I'm serious, people keep reacting with a sort of vague dismissal when I point this out, and I want to know why!

If adults in the US cannot read, then the only information they have access to is TV and video, the spaces with the most egregious and horrific misinformation!

If they cannot read, they cannot escape that misinformation.

This obscene lack of literacy should strike fear into every heart! US TV is notoriously horrific propaganda!

Is that???? Not??? Obvious???????

I know this sounds sarcastic, I know it does, but I'm completely serious here. I do not understand where the disconnect is.

[onewomancitadel]

Hi again. About my previous question you brought up some interesting points like legitimizing Jaune and Cinder in the eyes of the fandom. However, the reaction of Jaune killing Penny was mostly negative, saying that it would be better if Ruby killed Penny, though I saw some Jaune haters defending his actions and also about his sword: "Wouldn't be surprised if that was exactly what they were going for, specifically to make their cult go"oh the SYMBOLISM ahh GOOD WRITING ahh",like they know that"

Yeah, I'm going to be real with you: I don't care about this side of fandom, I mean, Ruby as the Winter Maiden? It makes absolutely no sense thematically. They don't know how to read a text, let alone metaphor or symbolism. Narrative is dead and we killed it etc.

What do they mean cult...? I just like R/WBY. I like its storytelling. Yes, his sword breaking is meaningful, what else do they think is the point of it? None of their weapons are meant to be 'realistic', the weapons are sort of like... doing character work, the same way Semblances are.

If you need me to assauge your worries, this is me formally assauging your worries.

However, the reaction of Jaune killing Penny was mostly negative

Although based on what I saw on Tumblr, this wasn't the case. People were upset Penny died, yes, but not that Jaune did it.

If you're reading fandom response on places like Reddit or Discord (I refuse to use Discord for fandom activity, it's too insular) just remember that the most emotional people are going to be there, and people really really love to hate to love a show like R/WBY. I stopped using the subreddit partly because there were so many people obsessed with the show who still refused to stop watching it. There are still people who want the show to go back to what it was like in V2. That's never going to happen. They still keep watching. The show is clearly not catering to them lol.

I really wouldn't worry. Actually, what I'd suggest to you to do instead is focus on positive things in fandom. Yes, I love being a bitch and whining about other people, and I love being a bitch about people who lack the most basic media literacy (like it's not complicated), but at the end of the day I do find being constructive is better than spending time worrying about that side of fandom. So yes, I am very happy to assuage concerns you have, and I'm happy to receive questions on this topic, and I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but I am trying to intimate that part of the reason I am really focussed so much on posting what I feel are constructive posts (and even ones that contain criticism!) is that it's more of a net positive. I don't really win anything arguing with people who lack basic media literacy.

I'm not exaggerating. It's actually a really serious problem in a lot of fandom discourse right now. There's far too much to get into on the topic, and in some ways it's not even a lot of peoples' fault, and it's also complicated by politics having a long and messy relationship with the purpose of fiction. But yeah.

And when I'm talking specifically about legitimising Cinder/Jaune: I'm talking about later in the story, and their interactions being... very unique and humanising. If we're talking non-general audience though, as in fandom enthusiasts, yes the task might be harder. But when I also say 'legitimising', consider also it's Jaune and Cinder's respective ultimate narrative tasks. So also 'legitimised inside the narrative', I suppose.

Yeah I like R/WBY, what about it lol. I'm not apologetic. I've been here since V1 too.

Hope you are having a good timezone-appropriate time. (:

I came back to edit to add the following caveat: I’m prepared to be wrong, I’m prepared to be told a different story, and that’s probably a whole separate post... and on a more positive note there are a lot of people on Tumblr that I know I agree with in many major ways, even if we do deviate on some things such as Cinder or the importance of Salem/Ozma, or most recently, the role of Penny in the story. There are actually people I think are very cool! I don’t hold resentment for the entirety of R/WBY fandom.

So nobody worries that I’m vagueing them: my positive sentiment also extends to anybody who follows me or interacts with my posts etc., just so that’s immediately clear.