#anyway sorry for the personal dump on this fan blog :p

[sannin-three]

Does anybody else live with a subconscious fear that people secretly hate you? Like I know I'm not totally alone on this i just wonder how common it is

[transcendentcacophony]

Thinking about Posts and Tumblr

So I responded to an earlier post from @kalesims in the comments. I probably should have reblogged it so I didn't have to break up my response which may have made it less than useful (and potentially read to mean the opposite of what I meant), but I also wanted to move a bit beyond the initial prompt with this longer one. I have not posted much Sims stuff in awhile. Part of this is because school and work demands are eating so much of my time right now1, part of this that ongoing pursuit of perfection we all seem to have to some extent on social media, and part of it is because I may have dumped my entire CC folder into my game without sorting it properly and now it runs like rubbish and I have to fix it. Regardless, I'm going to focus on issue #2 the ongoing pursuit of perfection, because I think this is the most relevant bit and the one I've been thinking a lot about lately. Tumblr is a social media platform. (This bit is a little academic, sorry.) I think we all know that, but do we ever really think about what that means? It's ultimately a company that provides a public-facing platform with the explicit intent of marketing ourselves to each other. More likes and followers for you=more ads and money for Tumblr, but they have to incentivize that for any of us to care. How do they do that? Make it a popularity contest. How often do you look at your likes or followers count? What emotional response do you have when they're low? How many creators incentivize new followers or more likes by releasing content to correlate with milestones in those areas? This is all part of feeding that beast2. It also draws on something referred to academically as the "hedonic treadmill," which is basically the keeping up with the Joneses mentality where we constantly compare our success to our peers and find ourselves wanting, even if we aren't. This is going somewhere, I promise.

When I first started Tumblr, I had one blog: transcendentcacophony. I started it explicitly to follow sims blogs I liked and keep track of the cc I downloaded or things that caught my attention, and my initial posts all reflected that. After I was on for a while, I realized most blogs compartmentalized to a certain degree: you have a blog for gameplay, a blog for cc finds, a blog for interest x, etc., so, not being particularly versed in these things, I thought "This is how you tumble!" and immediately set about creating sideblogs like transcendentcacophonyinspire, transcendentcacophonys3cc, or transcendentcacophonystudyblr. I went through my entire archive, moved everything over to its new home, and deleted the original posts and reblogs from this page. Does that mean I think having all the sideblogs is wrong? Nope. The organization of having sideblogs is sometimes helpful, but they they make me feel kind of fractured on some level. None of these provide an image of a whole person, just brief glimpses of an aspect. Sometimes I regret having split the off, other times I find it more convenient. Mileage may vary, but the obvious winner for the sideblog model is arguably Tumblr. None of my blogs have many followers, but there isn't as much overlap in audience as you might think and if they were all still one blog, I doubt there'd be as many as there are.

This raises the question of who you intend your blog to be for. Is it for Tumblr, so they can keep making that sweet sweet ad revenue? Is it for the online audience? Or is it for you? Who do you see as your primary audience? The structure of social media clearly wants us to say everyone else. "You're here for the likes! The followers! The popularity!" Other companies lean in to this as well. How many followers do you have to have to qualify as an EA Game Changer?

I would argue that it's this pressure to have all likes, followers, etc., that prohibit us from posting what we really want to post. Are you posting the things that actually make you happy? Or are you posting the things that you think an audience wants to see?

Learning anything takes a lot of practice. How many times did you fall off before you learned to ride a bike? How many broken and malformed pots do you make before you get a perfect one? We learn by doing. Waiting for that perfect screenshot or getting reshade just right or having the perfect city in CAW keeps us from posting our broken pots. Maybe we need to post more broken pots.

If something makes us happy, does it need to be perfect, or do we love it anyway? "This is my first pot! It sucks, but I made it! Finishing it alone is an accomplishment! It's mine and I'm learning and I want to show that process so we can all get better together!" Shouldn't our screenshots or gameplay or worldbuilding be the same?

I am building a world in CAW. I've been doing it for quite awhile, and I have an entire folder full of broken pots as a result, but I learned something every time I broke one. When I read CAW forums, I learn more from the ones where things don't work than from ones where they do. I post some of my broken pots, and simmers like @nilxis or @murfeelee are so supportive and helpful and give me tips on how to better and fix issues I'm having. I value that part of this community. I don't learn to do better by not showing off my broken pots.

I know some of my interests are pretty niche. I'm building an alien scifi world, I have conversion projects from games that support that but probably won't be useful to mainstream simmers. I made a series of alien moons in conjunction with simblu, who is now deactivated. These are arguably not things that will get a lot of likes, reblogs, or followers, but they are things that make me happy. Kurt Vonnegut once said when he wrote books, he always wrote with only 2 people in mind: himself and his sister. His goal was that at the very least he would like what he wrote, and a few of the books were written with her in mind, and if anyone else liked it, it was just gravy. I can’t say I’m a fan of the man’s writing, but I kind of like the idea of this mentality.

To that end, I think I'm going to change up how I use this blog moving forward, with the express goal of posting more often and with more emphasis on things that make me happy or show off more of my broken pots. Maybe it will cost me followers, maybe it won't, but it will help me carve this little niche out of the internet that is mine, that makes me happy, and that seeks to support the simmers and other community members3 that have been so supportive of me in the past. If just one or two people get something from it, or are entertained, isn’t that still just as valid?

I don't mean to imply in any way that posting what makes you happy can't make you popular, or gain likes and followers. It's very much possible. Vonnegut wrote his books for himself and he published 14 novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works, complete with film adaptations of several, literary prizes, etc. You can be successful doing what you love.

But I don't know that I need to be successful at it. I want to be happy doing it first, and anything outside of that is gravy. I'm going to post more broken pots and worry less about perfection or "doing it right." I'm going to fall off the bike and get back up and keep going. And maybe, by falling and failing, I'll get better or at least good enough or comfortable enough I'm not worried so much about that quest for perfection that is currently prohibiting me from trying.

Anyways, @kalesims, I don't know if that answers the original question you had. But I'd love to see what you post, be it gameplay, screenshots, cc, etc., really whatever floats your boat, moving forward. And, if you're willing, I'd love to learn by doing together. Let's go break some pots.

1 Whoever decided the best way to avoid outbreaks on campus was to just cancel all breaks and holidays over the last year clearly doesn't understand college students (who very much are still having parties and making up their own breaks) or that the reason we have those breaks is for mental health. Fall break was specifically added to reduce suicide rates among graduate students. And admin wonders why everyone hates them... 2 There's a researcher who looks at social media as a neoliberal marketplace that forces us to monetize ourselves without necessarily allowing us to realize that's what we're doing. She's got a book coming out about it next month if anyone is interested: Pain Generation: Social Media, Feminist Activism, and the Neoliberal Self(ie)

3I have in no way forgotten you, @piyotan, and you are definitely part of my online community, this was just targeted largely at simming.

[ziracona]

I disagree with your assessment that the Bloodweb is an unnecessary or clunky part of the lore. I think the existence of the Bloodweb (and what we know about it via Baker) actually appears to tie in really well with the lore we've been getting in the Arcus entries and etc - there's a lot of emphasis in the Arcus logs on the very same kind of metaphysical interactivity with the Entity's world. Baker notes he can manipulate and learn about the Bloodweb similarly to how the Observer interacts w fog

Welp, you’re perfectly welcome to feel that way. I disagree, on a lot of fronts. First of all, the lore dumps with the archives have—with some exceptions—been regularly contradictory, poorly structured, convoluted, and just kinda bad, and I don’t care for them. One of the most recent tomes actually made I genuinely think, with no exaggeration here, the single worst writing choice I’ve ever seen in any piece of fiction—and that’s—god—that’s saying something. Also was a huge, rude, and hyper-unnecessary Fuck You to the fans, and in poor taste. That aside, the meta is kinda convoluted and they change shit as they go which is frustrating and not very solid. Bloodweb isn’t explained well at all in lore, I in 2 minutes gave a better meta than the game itself did, and I’m sure anyone who has put in more time than my 2 has done worlds better for fics or headcanons or what have you, but the base lore itself is just there for the game & not super well developed. That said, like I already said before in my first post, some people really prefer science heavy sci-fi to story and character heavy, and that’s fine. Love to dig in deep and build. And that’s fine, but it’s not my personal vibe or preferred story mode as consumer either. For sure Benedict & Arcus both mention metaphysics, but it’s really not well defined or explained and the parameters are worryingly undetermined for science heavy sci-fi (which while not my personal fave, I have a respect for, and enjoy too as sci-fi is p one of my top 3 genres). They haven’t really whittled down the base concept at all into something well made. But hey, you don’t have to agree with that, just like I don’t agree with you. I think the arcus lore is bad & the tomes have been mostly too, the observer is boring and unsympathetic, bland, unrelatable, and thoroughly uninterestingly portrayed for such a suddenly central character, and the fans have done more work for the characters, world, and meta than the devs, but you don’t have to agree with that. But also, not to be unduly curt sounding, but I just also don’t really care if you do? Not in a hostile way—you’re welcome to feel however you feel, go ham, love your media however you prefer. But you seem to have mistaken me for one of the DbD debate opinion blogs, when I’m a writer’s personal blog actually. And while debate is cool sometimes & useful and I have experience with it and like, I mean, I can do it and do, it’s never really been how I get my kicks or enjoyment in life, or how I like spending my time lol. I’m happy to discuss or debate w my pals, or just talk shop with other fans and stuff bc that’s a good time, but I don’t really want to spend my fandom experience time slots debating issues I don’t really care that much about anyway with anons I don’t know. 🤣 I’m sorry that sounds so sarcastic it’s hard to communicate mood through text. But there’s a ton of actual debate/discussion DbD blogs if it’s what you’re into—I’m just not one of them. 👍 Best of luck finding some of them.

[thesparklingletters-blog]

Hello everyone! ♥

It’s been a while since the last time I did a Top Ten Tuesday but this week topic just basically called to me! It’s Ten Books I Loved Less/More Than I Thought I Would. I’ve read 21 books this year but only two of them are 5 stars. This month I haven’t even rated a book 5 stars</3

Being let down so often inspired me to make a list of books I loved less than I hoped I would. It was a coincidence that this week topic is similar. True story, I swear! :P But BEWARE, I’ll be dragging a lot of people’s favorites. It’s okay for you to be upset with my choice, it’s okay if you disagree and want to discuss it, but there’s no need to be angry or fight over favorite books, alright? ;) Anyway, it’s definitely more than 10. Here you go!

(PS. all the title links will take you to my goodreads review while the full review links will take you to my blog review)

Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

I’ve seen nothing but praise for this book so without a doubt, I bought it the first time I saw it in the bookstore. I was prepared to cry and be amazed but it turned out to be just an okay read for me! I hate one of the protagonist and his chapters were pointless. Though to be fair, it’s partly my fault because me + historical fiction = not best friends 😂 Full review.

Gemina by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

Now before you yell at me, let me start by saying I did not dislike this book! I’m only slightly disappointed! It was 4-stars so I still enjoyed it so much. Buuuut compared to Illuminae, this one fell short for me. I feel like I didn’t connect with the characters as well as I did in the first book. Not to mention that this one was so much more confusing, but less scary :P Full review.

What I Thought Was True by Huntley Fitzpatrick

I adored My Life Next Door so much because adorable romance + juicy family drama are my jam. I was so excited to read another book by Huntley Fitzpatrick but boy, I disliked this one so much </3 there’s this witholding of important information that irritated me so much. It took a long time for me to finish it.

The Winner’s Kiss by Marie Rutkoski

Again, I didn’t dislike it. It just didn’t live up to my expectation. I loved The Winner’s Crime a lot it broke my heart to pieces, so obviously I expected the final book to blow me away. It didn’t. This was too technical, too much descriptions of war strategy and the mythology. And due to Kestrel’s condition, I felt like we were back to zero.

The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Helig

The premise of this series sounds so promising. I mean, time travel, ship, maps, diverse characters, what’s not to love? Unfortunately, the execution was too all over the place. The main character lacks of personality, there was unnecessary love triangle with a boring 2nd love interest, and info dumping :( the good news is, the second book was better. It comes out in February 28. Full review.

The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon

Oh God, the disappointment of the year. I know a lot of you love this series, that’s why I picked it up in the first place. Sadly, I hated it. I tried, I’m sorry. I disliked Paige, I hate the romance, I didn’t understand the world building & all the fancy terms, and the only thing I liked was the Seven Seals. Safe to say I wouldn’t read the sequels. Full review.

The Sun is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon

I wasn’t so surprised to know I disliked this book. I’ve seen negative reviews from bloggers I trust and insta love is a red flag for me. But since a lot of people praised this book, I had a little hope that maaaaybe I’d love it. Well, I didn’t. I didn’t like the insta love, it was so unrealistic even if it didn’t feel like an insta love :( Full review.

By Your Side by Kasie West

No one feels more sad than I do to see this book on a disappointment list. I’m a die hard fan of Kasie West. I’ve read and loved all her books, except this one. The premise says locked in a library. I was so excited and Kasie’s writing gets better each book, so naturally I had high hopes for this one. It’s the worst of all her books. The characters have boring to basically no personality and the romance was cold. I really wish her next book will be better.

Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven

It’s basically the same case as Gemina and The Winner’s Kiss. I still liked it but less than I hoped I would. I enjoyed All the Bright Places so much and this one fell flat compared to it. It’s less emotional and honestly, kind of boring. Sorry! But I’ll still read anything Jennifer Niven writes ♥ Full review.

Vassa in the Night by Sarah Porter

Remember when I said The Bone Season was the disappointment of the year a few paragraphs ago? Well, I lied. This one is. It’s my first 1-star rating in a long time. I had high hopes for this book because Russian fairy tale? Count me in. Sadly there was so many plot holes, but not enough Russian vibes. There’s basically no world building and the plot was just as vague. I wanted to DNF it so much, and I wish I had. Full review.

Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour by Morgan Matson

Now I feel a bit scared for putting this book on my list because every single person I know who reads this book, loves it. I had no idea why. It was boring and there was no chemistry between Amy and Roger. And to be honest, I didn’t connect with Amy at all. No, I disliked her. I… you know, I’ll just move on to next book before you all get mad at me :P

The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi

I was so intrigued by this book because the premise + cover = to die for, not to mention a lot of bloggers seemed to love it. However, I feel like this book was a ball of beautiful prose with no actual plot nor character development. I’m sorry but Maya was such a weak protagonist. The romance between her and Amar was also so insta-lovey, even if I knew they go way back. I’m still gonna read A Crown of Wished though, because I’m sure Gauri would be a more interesting main character. Full review.

Well, I feel like this list has turned into a rant and my tone is getting more and more bitter. Not my intention, but kind of inevitable when talking about books I dislike :P to brighten up the mood, here are some books that I love MORE than I expected! It’s my good surprise list ♥

The Crown’s Game • I’ll Meet You There • Six of Crows • Illuminae

Alright everyone, those are 12 books I loved LESS than I hoped I would (plus 4 books I loved more than I expected). Do you see any of your favorites on the list? Or do you not like them as well? What books do you love less than you expected? Don’t forget to link me to your TTT so I could check it out! ♥

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My List of Disappointment : Books I Love LESS Than I Hoped I Would Hello everyone! ♥ It's been a while since the last time I did a Top Ten Tuesday…