#anyway this is a great way to make a statement

[karanseraph]

It goes back to the voters, though, right?

Like, I know people were saying this last year after the election: I can't believe so many Americans voted against their own self interest

But, a bunch did.

And even if that percent wasn't the majority of everyone, or the majority of all registered voters, the situation and turn-out was such that it was enough to result in our current situation. (Where there's no "mandate", but they keep repeating there is.)

And so, understandably, now, a lot of people who didn't vote for that, or didn't vote, or regret how they voted are now stressed and frustrated in their own ways.

And I don't know what to do to make any future votes we may have better. My Congresswoman and two Senators happen to be Democrats and have been making some statements about what is going on. But Republican majorities, even if narrow still exist.

Yet, in my own household there is an enjoyer of a certain news channel who is an apologist for anything Trump and Republicans do, no matter what I say. One of those "I don't like him personally, but..." Just steadfastly convinced that somehow Republicans were the way to go.

And I have tried for years to argue against this and it does not work. I will just be seen as a hysterical girl or indoctrinated. I talk about Project 2025 "Oh, he said that's not his". I talk about the recent "buyout" of federal employees being an attempt to evade unemployment payments and labor policies, "lots of people think it's a good idea".I say something is seems wrong or unjust, "That's the way the world works."

There's people who for whatever reason can't process that society is what we make it at any given time. We can change it. But we have to want to and then do the work. We need a certain number (I don't know the percent) to tip change in a given direction.

I mean in 2020 we rapidly made sweeping societal changes and showed remote work could work for a lot of people (not everyone) and maybe it was better for the environment, but ever since there's been those who want to go back to the way things were before. Get everyone back in an office. Saying think of all the businesses like restaurants and shops that are near workplaces that will go out of business.

Well, those shops could be located closer to where people actually live where we could walk to them.

Anyway, that's my rant.

(But PS, extra side-rant, this person in my household will tell anecdotes about how back in the day in their industry it was rare to hire women as engineers, but he told those co-workers, that no he seriously did want them to consider the resumes of the women and not just pretend. So, it was all a great thing when he could be the good one and let these resumes be considered or to go do recruiting at universities, but now he can defend people who say DEI is a bad thing with all the insinuation that it's like saying "straight white men need not apply" when really it's saying "No, seriously, everyone can apply". (and then, yanno, have their resume read by a bot for some ghost position.))

[booksinmythorax]

On Tyranny and Tumblr #10: Believe in truth.

To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis on which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

In other words, Snyder is saying there's a reason an administration might, for example, remove data sets from the CDC website.

Snyder spends a lot of time in this chapter with 1930s German philologist Victor Klemperer's "four modes" of the death of truth under authoritarianism (Snyder, p. 66-69):

"Open hostility to verifiable reality": Lies. Just straight up boldly lying, about anything from the cause of a plane crash to the outcome of an election, especially when the facts are right there and visible to everyone.

"Shamanistic incantation": "Endless repetition" of slogans and nicknames and soundbites until non sequiturs and ad hominem arguments sound like verified fact. For this to work, huge groups of people need to feel more comfortable accepting lies than they do accepting that they can be fooled.

"Magical thinking": "The open embrace of contradiction". This isn't the radical acceptance kind of stuff that you'd learn in therapy to better your individual life. This is 2 + 2 = 5. This is replacing fact checks with, as one former student of Klemperer's put it, "[abandoning] yourself to your feelings and focusing on the Fuhrer's greatness instead of the discomfort you are feeling at present". Scary stuff, but stuff people do all the time.

"Misplaced faith": Basically making a leader into a god, leaving no room "for the small truths of our individual discernment and experience". In this way, truth becomes "oracular rather than factual". Instead of facts being about what can be verified, they become about who said them best and appealed best to the emotions of frightened, poorly educated, prejudiced people.

Snyder also highlights a passage from Romanian playwright Eugène Ionesco's account of his experience in the 1930s with a counterfascist group trying to formulate arguments against those put forth by the Nazi Party.

"From time to time, one of our friends said: 'I don't agree with them, to be sure, but on certain points, nevertheless, I must admit, for example, the Jews...', etc. And this was a symptom. Three weeks later, this person would become a Nazi."

Here are some ways we can focus on believing in truth in our online lives:

If you know a public figure is a large-scale liar - for example, if a reputable newspaper made a list of over 30,000 lies he told in 4 years - don't listen to a word they say. Don't watch the press conferences. Don't focus on quotes or soundbites from them. Go ahead and assume they're only lying if their mouth is open. If they make a factual statement, consider it an accident. Truth isn't about one person, anyway.

Use Media Bias/Fact Check to determine the validity of sources you find on the internet. Try to only get your information from sources with a good fact check score.

Don't repeat falsehoods. Before you reblog or repost anything that appeals to your emotions - makes you angry, makes you sad, makes you feel grim satisfaction or hopelessness or even schadenfreude - research. Find out who said it, when, to whom, and why. If you don't have time to research, don't spread it around.

Learn to read critically. Kelly Jensen wrote a great guide to critically reading a press release from the federal government in 2025.

We covered this a little bit in #9: don't use the same nicknames, slogans, or labels for things that the fascists do. Repeating the "incantations" makes them sound more like truth.

Say true things as loudly as you can. We don't know exactly why a plane and a US Army helicopter crashed over the Potomac River as of this writing, but a lack of air traffic controllers may have contributed to it. Don't even repeat the falsehood in your attempt to refute it. Just research and then say the true thing.

Feel free to list other applications in comments or tags or on reblogs.

Other lessons from On Tyranny:

#1: Do not obey in advance

#2: Defend institutions

#3: Beware the one-party state

#4: Take responsibility for the face of the world

#5-7: Remember professional ethics, Be wary of paramilitaries, and Be reflective if you must be armed

#8: Stand out

#9: Be kind to our language

[smartzelda]

Sorry guys I gotta speak my truth on this one

I'm not kidding when I say that I think that blaming shit media literacy from fans on shipping/shippers avoids the actual root of the problem to throw people you can easily throw under the bus (simply because it's not unpopular to consider people who post about ships or ship characters in media as having lesser or derivative tastes by default)

And here's why.

I think when you blame people who are "shippers" or "consume media through shipping lenses", the true root of it all is a mindset problem.

In actually, putting on shipping lenses can be helpful when trying to analyze a piece of media. When analyzing media you're supposed to approach it through a number of mindsets and put on different lenses (both to deepen your personal understanding of the media, and to pick it apart and see what you can find there (whether intentional or not on the author's part)), and different ships can be some of those lenses

When it comes to ships between main characters (for those who are genuinely willing to see what the narrative is showing with their relationship and what it's doing), there are times when analyzing it from a shipping lens may be helpful. As someone from KH fandom, I have seen people come to deeper understandings and pick canon apart in the process of analyzing a relationship that is genuinely integral to the story (platonic or not). I've also seen people get into rarepairs of characters who barely interact or who just suffer little screen time, and I've seen them come to better understandings of those side characters and how they potentially fit into the world of the media simply because people are now focusing on these characters and how they fit into the narrative.

Frankly, I resent the idea that the only way to truly objectively analyze a piece of media is by turning off the part of your brain that gets excited over relationships and individual characters. Don't get me wrong, that is a way to approach a piece of media and a valid one at that, but the truth is that we cannot be free of bias.

For instance, I was watching House MD with my parents circa last year. At some point I started heavily tuning into what was going on with House and Wilson's relationship. My parents, on the other hand, were largely watching casually. They're not thinking of character relationships or getting heavily invested in most characters, they're watching because they like watching. One of them in particular did try to analyze things that were happening in the show as they happened. However, when it came to the scene late in the series where House threw out Dominika's letter approving her American citizenship, my parents could understand that he was doing that because he didn't want her to leave, but not much beyond that. I ended up explaining to them that House's fake marriage for Dominika was an explicit parallel to when Wilson was living with House in the early seasons. Both situations started with House being none too happy about it but ultimately letting them stay, spending a considerable amount of effort getting them to leave/getting this situation to be finally over so he didn't have to deal with it anymore, and then by the time a piece of news comes through that would mean the person in question actually leaves, House hides this news as long as he can. Because he doesn't actually want them to leave and has grown attached. And by doing this he became a self fulfilling prophecy. By reacting to the truth of Wilson and Dominika leaving him the way he does, he seals his fate and they ultimately leave anyways. Maybe I ship Hilson, but becoming open to how their relationship was handled allowed me to transition to doing character studies and recognizing patterns/parallels that I wouldn't have noticed if I didn't particularly care about the characters or their relationship.

Likewise, I've seen mutuals complain about how people who don't like or don't care about certain characters often overlook these characters (what they're actually like and their place in the narrative), while the mutuals in question (by default) are able to come to deeper understanding of what the writers/story is trying to do because they care about this funky guy

You can't eradicate bias when you're engaging in media analysis, but you can consciously put on a range of lenses and observe the media through different povs with the goal of understanding the media better or bolstering your reading of it. And those lenses/povs can include focusing on specific relationships or the perpective of certain characters

And this is why I say it's actually a mindset problem. Shippers and people who have this one blorbo they like a lot aren't inherently terrible "fandom brained individuals" who are the root of media analysis problems. The problem only arises when people's readings/analysis of a piece of media are inherently restrictive/narrow and self centered. Your problem is with people who view a piece of media through a ship they like but don't keep an open mind about it, and whose "media analysis"/views on canon cannot be split from fanon and their comfortability levels. These are the people whose "media analysis" starts and ends with justifying their fanon as canon, whose views on media revolve around sorting characters and relationships into categories they personally enjoy rather than trying to understand what's going on.

Here's another example.

Here we have a fictional ship we'll call uhhhh...Blanebin. this fictional ship I made up on the spot for characters that don't exist named Blane and Corbin

Person A is super into Blanebin. They're part of the main cast of characters and canonically childhood best friends, so person A (as much as they enjoy fanart and fic) is also enjoying analyzing how narratively important to each other they are. Recently, Corbin started dating another character in canon, but Person A is enjoying watching how Blane is reacting to this. "Is this potentially a tell that Blane is jealous or is having complicated feelings about this? What if he was, how would that contextualize his behavior this season? Here's what I think based on how Blane dealt with explicit jealousy last season in a different situation". It's not impossible that person A is still missing further understanding due to their obsession with Blanebin, but at the end of the day this obsession has allowed them to start picking through the characters both in and outside this relationship. It has allowed them to see potential subtext and theorize on what might happen next with these characters' relationship. Not to mention that with addition of Corbin dating someone else, instead of trying to erase this fact or state that Corbin canonically isn't into that person, Person A is trying to factor in how Corbin's current dating life affects his relationship with Blane (irregardless on personal views on the nature of Corbin's relationship with the person he's dating).

Person B is also super into Blanebin. They really enjoy fanart and fic of the characters, love obsessing over their moments together, and just feel like there's really something between the characters. To person B, every moment between them is just further proof that the writers are ship teasing them. But Corbin getting together with someone else this season? Oh that pissed person B off. They cannot believe that even though Corbin and Blane are CLEARLY gay for each other the writers had Corbin get with someone else this season. Perhaps, they think, it was even a decision specifically made to spite fans. How evil of the writers to tease a perfectly good ship and then have them not get together first? They must have been just doing those teases to get views from Blanebin shippers those scoundrels. To Person B, since Corbin started dating someone when he obviously has some chemistry with Blane (even though the series is far from over) means that Blanebin can never get together now and Corbin x person he's dating is ruining Blanebin by existing. In fact, they think, this is terrible writing for Corbin to be dating someone else because they don't like that relationship and don't see the point. Obviously if the writers were good then Corbin would have started dating Blane instead because this was supposed to be the Blanebin show.

Person C despises Blanebin. Don't get them wrong, they've always enjoyed the character's childhood friendship, but they actually have always thought Blane would have been better off with Victoria. They have a lot of moments too! But they're tired of seeing people ship Blanebin. Corbin just got together with someone else, so obviously that's not gonna work out. Plus Corbin and Blane totally has always given person C bro vibes. In fact, person C thinks, sure Corbin and Blane have a close friendship, but people shouldn't be shipping them. Person C likes Blanetoria and Blanetoria can't be canon if Corbin is in the way of it. So Person C likes to read Blanebin as siblings anyways. Sure they're canonically friends, but obviously their friendship turned into brotherhood. This means that nothing can be in the way of Blanetoria and Corbin can keep dating the person he's already canonically dating. Actually, now Blanebin just straight up makes Person C uncomfortable. Don't the pesky shippers understand that Blanebin are sibling coded because they're childhood best friends and that they're important to each other because they're brothers? It's obvious to anyone with eyes.

Sure, ships are involved here, but is the root of this problem shipping? Character A isn't as knowledgeable of other characters in the plot due to this lens they're using, but at the end of the day they're dedicated to analysis. Their love of the characters is pushing them beyond what they like or dislike to try to understand what might be happening through their lens. Not perfect, but they are slowly broadening their horizons. But Person B and C's problems here are their restrictiveness. What is or should be canon to them is tantamount to what they personally like or find comfortable. Is person C actually analyzing the this fake show when they decide to "read" Blanebin as basically canonically siblings (and this all of their moments are totally a bro thing) just because they don't like Blanebin and the idea of them getting together over Blanetoria makes them uncomfortable? Is person B actually analyzing this fake show when their "analysis" of Blanebin goes only as far as asserting it's being ship teased and deciding anything short of canonizing Blanebin is a targeted attack or "bad writing" because it's not what they wanted personally to happen?

This is what I'm talking about. This is the mindset. Shipping isn't the problem. The problem is when people marry fanon and canon to the point where they have a vested interest in superimposing their fanon over canon as "a reading" and trying to make "collective decisions" on what is canon (or what canon is trying to say) based on what does or doesn't make them uncomfortable. The problem is people being restrictive and centering their own likes and dislikes in the conversation, so they can only interact with canon "analysis" wise by deciding what is canon or should be canon "as obviously agreed on by everyone". You can't simply claim you like media analysis. To be able to analyze media and bolster your views on any given canon, you must be open to looking at it through multiple povs, to studying characters without trying to pretend things you don't like don't exist or do like do exist. There is a balance that must be kept between trying to keep objectivity and putting on specific focus/bias based upon the lenses you're putting on. You have to be willing to try to figure out what a media is doing or saying, not saying you're trying to figure out what it's saying while in actuality trying to define the narrative around what people believe it's saying in ways that suit you.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[phynali]

I was in a research talk this week with a researcher who is doing some stuff related to grocery retailers, and he mentioned -- off the record and anecdotally so of course I'm telling all of you here -- that the major grocery chains (Coles and Woolies, as above) have shareholders who saw ridiculous record profits during the lockdowns here, and now they won't let profits fall back down. They need that little bar on the graph to continue to increase, if not as dramatically, rather than allowing the more realistic regression to the mean, the decrease in profits and return to a steady state.

The farmers are on record saying "we're not charging the retailers more than we were a few years ago". The cost of food hasn't increased. The cost of groceries have because the shareholders' greed is endless.

Activists in Tasmania have stuck up more honest promo stickers inside Coles & Woolworths stores, the two dominant supermarket chains in Australia.

[hplonesomeart]

You know I had to do my own rendition of this eventually. It’s just too good to pass up :))

Attached is just the still image version (not gif) and then some behind-the-scenes initial sketch without puzzle pattern. Also the car had a nose for some reason…glad that I went back to the actual reference material to change it because the Puzzlemobile ain’t got one <<

[seventh-district]

again and again i find myself lamenting that audio roleplay isn't taken more seriously by some people. like yeah, they often have a romantic element, and by nature they usually directly involve/address the listener- and i totally get that those things aren't to everyone's taste. no art or entertainment is universally appealing, and that's okay! but.. it still makes me a lil sad that the "cringe" reputation of asmr/audio rp precedes it. there's a whole lot of talent and creativity being poured into these audios by so many people that i feel goes unrecognized and/or disrespected simply due to the medium that the stories are being told through.

[quietwingsinthesky]

another fact about millie: worst hostage in the entire world because she is insufferable about it. the minute she knows you Need her for something, she is going to start pushing what she’s allowed to do and say. girl who thrives with a gun to her head because she knows you need her alive and can’t pull the trigger.

[maxlarens]

okay im done talking about lewis and roscoe now, because im really not inclined to get involved in things i don’t know that much about. neither of the anons i’ve answered already were coming from a hateful place and i think all drivers are open to some level of criticism and discussion. there’s nothing wrong with saying those things on tumblr imo

i am however (and this is not directed at any specific anon, it’s just a general comment!!) wary to overly criticise someone like lewis who is the only black driver on a grid dominated by white men, in a sport dominated by white men at all levels. i think there are fair criticisms to level at lewis but i don’t think it helps to call him out on all these little issues that you might ignore for another white driver. i think maybe lewis isn’t doing his best with the resources that he has, but i think he’s trying harder than a lot of other drivers. and that means something.

of course i have general criticisms of activism under capitalism and performative activism. but i dont know if thats helpful here.

[milkweedman]

I am sorry you've been harrassed by terfs, but the way you are currently trying to weed them out seems a bit misguided. As in, the vast majority of terfs are in fact ok with big hairy CIS men. The so-called men they are actively hating are trans women/transfem people. So by acting like you proclaiming your love to big hairy dudes is the best terf-repellant you seem to be missing the point at best.

i'd love to actually respond to your concerns or whatever the hell it was that you were trying to convey with this ask, but it has almost no basis in reality so i literally cant.

thats the one statement on how effective i think the banners are that has left my queue so far. which is: i hope it works but also have literally 2 other backup plans already in case it does not. i dont know why youre calling that "acting like [me] proclaiming [my] love to big hairy dudes is the best terf-repellant", because thats wildly off target from what i have actually said at any point. everything else youve said is also pretty much either dead wrong or ignorant, so im getting the feeling that you not reading has been a problem for a while.

(ive also not mentioned terfs this entire time--ive been talking about radfems and using the word radfems. they're not the same thing although there's large overlap. so like. thats strike two for zero reading comprehension, buddy. cause you are literally not talking about the group im talking about and youre also inventing whole new sentences that i didnt say.)

[gingersp1ce547]

maybe the key to be able to acknowledge qsmp chara’s deaths AND keep interacting with content is to pretend that the characters died but then

the flow of time started to accelerate and go by so fast that it ended the current universe and created a new one with new versions of these characters that are similar but not quite the same /j

Tumblr user Pommunist first and foremost let me say i love you sm. Our interactions always bring me joy and I’m mentally giving you a big hug or a sick high five or whatever form of affection you would prefer

My part 6 ending headcanon has always been is that enricho pucci never existing meant that the events of parts 1-5 all still happened but when joylene was born jotaro made the conscious decision to avoid making her a “jojo” by naming her Irene instead. Literally the biggest headcanon copium ever so that comparison even if its joking is pretty apt for this situation

I’ll figure something out with time for the ending of things but i do think another part thats making it hard for me is that things aren’t DONE done.

With dsmp theirs no new content thats coming out of that and so all the posts are about the things that already happened.

I worry that if this reboot comes to pass, and especially if its done in a way i dont enjoy its gonna clog up the tag and make it hard for me to find the stuff i do still enjoy.

Though, knowing qsmpblr if i ask really nicely for people to use a tag for it they’ll prob do it

[frumfrumfroo]

Can't believe I never noticed before that most of the dialogue in TFA is... kinda bad? As bad as anything in TROS. The prequels dialogue is bad, but you can tell it's *attempting* poetry. A lot of the dialogue in TFA and TROS is just stating the obvious or trite quips.

It's not a great movie.

[sharingresourcesforpalestine]

you know, I feel like, as little money as I have, I still haven’t put into perspective how much I have that could still be of use. I’m not so poor that I can’t make a difference. I can still buy a meal if I go out. I can buy a trinket. I’m not so poor or struggling with life that I don’t have food in my stomach and a place to sleep. Donating like I have this week has me wanting to do something that I hope many others are already doing. For every cent I would have spent for myself, on groceries, deliveries, gifts, etcetera (beyond the strikes where I am not spending money on anything but Palestinian causes) I will donate equal or greater that amount to Palestine. Because if I have money for me, I should have money for others. This is not me setting myself on fire to keep others warm, I know I would be of no use long term if I destroyed myself by going entirely broke with no way to survive myself. This is considering things beyond medical bills and life expenses that I need to keep going. When I count groceries, it’s things like when I use Instacart bc I can’t go out, because even though I don’t have a means of transportation, delivery is a luxury and if I can afford to pay for that, I can afford to donate. If I buy something non-essential like some snacks or the like, I have to match it with a donation. Because if I can afford to buy that, I can afford to donate. And just due to the nature of being a reminder, every time I get my period I’m going to donate to sanitary products for Palestine, because while pads are an essential product, donating even a little bit towards helping others get even the opportunity to get the same access as I do is an important reminder. There’s $5 donations available for those, and that’s about the cost of an average subscription I would be able to afford— it won’t buy a whole kit, but it will still put money towards that goal. I may not be able to do all the good the world needs, but the world needs all the good that I can do. As much as I can spare, I will donate. I only wish I could do more.

[thiefking]

(ALERT. WARNING. OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THE FOLLOWING POST ARE NOT MEANT TO INSINUATE I THINK THAT PEOPLE WHO USE TONE TAGS ARE BAD OR HAVE BAD INTENTIONS. I AM SIMPLY POINTING OUT SOME OF MY FRUSTRATIONS WITH THEM AND HOW THEY WORK, OR RATHER DO NOT WORK, IN AN EXAGGERATEDLY ANGRY/LOUD MANNER AT A HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION, NOT A SPECIFIC PERSON OR PERSONS OR INCIDENT, AND IT WASN'T EVEN THE MAIN POINT OF THE POST I WAS ORIGINALLY WRITING WHICH WAS JUST ABOUT SOME ANNOYING OVER-COMMENTED STUFF ON MY POST. ALERT. WARNING)

i am still pleased and amazed at the amount of people on my tone indicator parantheticals post who AREN'T being weird and aggro, but i will say. while i got tired of the aggro ones the moment the first one showed up i have also grown tired of the "this is just tumblr tags/congrats you just reinvented tumblr tags" observation. it has been made many times, i can never tell if it's a teasing joke or if they're seriously like "umm dumbass this is the same thing" (because of course they are not paired with any indication of intent, such as a word encased in a pair of parentheses, because for some reason being overfamiliar with strangers on the internet has become very normalized, and they just expect that if they say things to people they have never met that the person they say that to will be able to tell whether they are kidding or trying to insult them, which is highly variable per person) and either way it's like...

i mean. yeah. on tumblr, that is the same thing as what you could use the tags for

but tumblr isn't a messaging app

even its in-built dms do not have tags

if you are using discord if you type a # it would prompt you to pick a channel you are referring to

The Primary Location You Would Use Tone Indicators Is In Conversation With Others And Tumblr Is Technically A Blogging Platform

also a bunch of people are like "ummm or you could just put it in the SENTENCE like a NORMAL PERSON" and first of all shut up. secondly nowhere in the post did i say that i specifically would rather someone use random parantheticals instead of just stating their intent in the actual sentence, i said i would prefer parantheticals over highly abbreviated tone tags. obviously i would prefer people just say properly what they mean, that is literally what i do when i have a genuine question to ask, i don't do "what do you mean (genuine) (sincere question) (confused)" i say "sorry i'm a little confused, what do you mean by xyz?". literally did not fucking say that i think parantheticals would be better than just saying what you actually mean to begin with IN the initial question. however THIRDLY sometimes you just fucking have adhd or the conversation is fast and you don't think to phrase it carefully. and in that situation you might realize after you already sent the message that it's ambiguous what you meant or if you were sincere, so you send like "(JOKE)" or "genuine question" or if you make a reference "(you know like xyz meme/show/game)" immediately afterwards so people know and can respond appropriately. and i would so much rather see people spell the fucking thing out instead of saying /j or /gen or god forbid /ref (WHAT!!! ARE YOU FUCKING REFERENCING!!! YOU CAN'T JUST SAY IT'S A REFERENCE AND LEAVE IT AT THAT THAT DOESN'T HELP!!! WHY IS THAT EVEN A TONE TAG!!! YOU HAVEN'T GIVEN ME ANY CONTEXT FOR IT, THIS IS NOT A TONE TO INDICATE, IT DOESN'T INDICATE ANYTHING, I COULD PROBABLY TELL FROM THE PHRASING TO BEGIN WITH THAT IT WAS SOME KIND OF REFERENCE ANYWAY, YOU HAVE GIVEN ME ZERO INFORMATION AAUUAUAAAAGGGGHHH the fucking autistic person who would not be able to tell that you were making a reference without the tag would probably also not be able to tell what the goddamn joke was supposed to be! i AM that autistic person sometimes!!! you cannot just /ref your way out of that if you are ACTUALLY TRYING to HELP AUTISTIC PEOPLE then make it clear you can be ASKED TO CLARIFY THINGS and then SUCK IT UP AND EXPLAIN THE JOKE EVEN IF IT MAKES IT LESS FUNNY!!! and this is entirely specific to Me who has never once wanted someone to use tone tags even when i do ask for clarification on something, but if you don't want to ruin your joke by explaining it and i already Understood that it was a joke, the /ref and or /j you put on it is actually. equivalent. to explaining the joke and ruining it...... because in this scenario i knew it was a joke already...)

ahem. anyway. i think the people who say "ummm orrr you could just bake it into the sentence :/" do not realize they are the ones being stupid while calling me stupid. because of the fact that they cannot read the post, where i don't say even once that i don't agree with them, because i am talking about something else, which is that if you gave me a choice between tone tags or tone parantheticals i would choose parantheticals

conversely i'm NOT tired of the elcor comparison, even a little bit, even though that one was also made a thousand times. i actually like that one a lot. i never played mass effect or anything i just think that's funny and cool. entire species that has autism... so beautiful ♡

[exopelagic]

ignore me I’m still pissed abt the ai thing

[anarkhebringer]

Getting hit with the Normalcy(tm) switch with FFXIV and not caring about it anymore means all the drama on Twitter has me grabbing popcorn instead of groaning and hoping my game doesn't break after every petty plugin dev dispute

[malcolmschmitz]

The Insider and Outsider Detectives

So there's a lot of discourse about detectives floating around, ever since 2020 shifted a lot of people's Views on the police. Everyone likes a good mystery story, but no one seems to know what to make of a detective protagonist- especially if they're a cop. And everyone who cares about this kind of thing likes to argue over whether detective stories hold up the existing order or subvert it. Are they inherently copaganda? Are they subversive commentary on the uselessness of the police?

I think they can be both. And I think there's a framework we can use to look at individual detectives, and their stories, that illuminates the space between "a show like LAPD straight-up exists to make the cops look good" and "Boy Detective is a gender to me, actually".

So. You can sort most detectives in fiction into two boxes, based on their role in society: the Insider Detective and the Outsider Detective.

The Insider Detective is a part of the society they're investigating in, and has access to at least some of the levers of power in that society. They can throw money at their problems, or call in reinforcements, and if they contact the authorities, those authorities will take them seriously. Even the people they're investigating usually treat them with respect. They're a nice normal person in a nice normal world, thank you very much; they're not particularly eccentric. You could describe them as "sensible". And crime is a threat to that normal world. It's an intrusion that they have to fight off. An Insider Detective solving a crime is restoring the way things ought to be.

Some clear-cut examples of Insider Detectives are the Hardy Boys (and their father Fenton), Soichiro "Light's Dad" Yagami, or Father Brown. Many police procedural detectives are Insider Detectives, though not all.

The Outsider Detective, in contrast, is not a part of the society they're investigating in. They're often a marginalized person- they're neurodivergent, or elderly, or foreign, or a woman in a historical setting, or a child. They don't have access to any of the levers of power in their world- the authorities may not believe them (and might harass them), the people they're investigating think they're a joke (and can often wave them off), and they're unlikely to have access to things like "a forensics lab". The Outsider Detective is not respectable, and not welcome here- and yet they persist and solve the crime anyway. A lot of the time, when an Outsider Detective solves a crime, it's less "restoring the world to its rightful state" and more "exposing the rot in the normal world, and forcing it to change."

Some clear-cut examples of Outsider Detectives are Dirk Gently, Philip Marlowe, Sammy Keyes, or Mello from Death Note.

Now, here's the catch: these aren't immutable categories, and they are almost never clear-cut. The same detective can be an Insider Detective in one setting and an Outsider Detective in another. A good writer will know this, and will balance the two to say something about power and society.

Tumblr's second-favourite detective Benoit Blanc is a great example of this. Theoretically, Mr. Blanc should be an Insider Detective- he's a world-famous detective, he collaborates with the police, he's odd but respectable. But because of the circumstances he's in- investigating the ultra-rich, who live in their own horrid little bubbles- he comes off as the Outsider Detective, exposing the rot and helping everyone get what they deserve. And that's deliberate. There is no world where a nice, slightly eccentric, mildly fruity, fairly privileged guy like Benoit Blanc should be an outsider. But the turbo-rich live in such an insular world, full of so much contempt for anyone who isn't Them, that even Benoit Blanc gets left out in the cold. It's a scathing political statement, if you think about it.

But even a writer who isn't trying to Say Something About The World will still often veer between making their detective an Insider Detective and an Outsider Detective, because you can tell different kinds of stories within those frameworks. Jessica Fletcher from Murder She Wrote is a really good example of this-- she's a respectable older lady, whose runaway success as a mystery novelist gives her access to some social cachet. Key word: some.

Within her hometown of Cabot Cove, Fletcher is an Insider Detective. She's good friends with the local sheriff, she's incredibly familiar with the town's social dynamics, she can call in a favour from basically anyone... but she's still a little old lady. The second she leaves town, she might run into someone who likes her books... but she's just as likely to run into a police officer who thinks she's crazy or a perp who thinks she's an easy target. She has the incredibly tenuous social power that belongs to a little old lady that everyone likes- and when that's gone, she's incredibly vulnerable.

This is also why a lot of Sherlock Holmes adaptations tend to be so... divisive. Holmes is all things to all people, and depending on which stories you choose to focus on, you can get a very different detective. If you focus on the stories where Holmes collaborates with the police, on the stories with that very special kind of Victorian racism, or the stories where Holmes is fighting Moriarty, you've got an Insider Detective. If you focus on the stories where Holmes is consulting for a Nice Young Lady, on the stories where Holmes' neurodivergence is most prominent, or on his addictions, you've got an Outsider Detective.

Finally, a lot of buddy detective stories have an Insider Detective and an Outsider Detective sharing the spotlight. Think Scully and Mulder, or Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde. This lets the writer play with both pieces of the thematic puzzle at the same time, without sacrificing the consistency of their detective's character.

Back to my original point: if you like detective fiction, you probably like one kind of story better than the other. I know I personally really prefer Outsider Detective Stories to Insider Detective Stories- and while I can enjoy a good Insider Detective (I'd argue that Brother Cadfael, my beloved, is one most of the time), I seek out detectives who don't quite fit into the world they live in more often than not.

And if that's the vibe you're looking for... you're not going to run into a lot of police stories. It's absolutely possible to make a story where a cop (or, even better, an FBI agent) is an Outsider Detective-- Nick Angel from Hot Fuzz was originally going to be one of my 'clear-cut examples' until I remembered that he is, in fact, legally a cop! But a cop who's an Outsider Detective is going to be spending a lot of time butting heads with local law enforcement, to the point where he doesn't particularly feel like one. He's probably going to get fired at some point, and even if his badge gets reinstated, he's going to struggle with his place in the world. And a lot of Outsider Detective stories where the detective is a cop or an FBI agent are intensely political, and not in a conservative way- they have Things To Say about small towns, clannishness, and the injustice that can happen when a Pillar Of The Community does something wrong and everyone looks the other way. (Think Twin Peaks or The Wicker Man.)

Does this mean Insider Detective Stories are Bad Copaganda and Outsider Detective Stories are Good Revolutionary Stories? No. If you take one thing away from this post, please make it that these categories are morally neutral. There are Outsider Detective stories about cops who are Outsiders because they really, really want an excuse to shoot people. There are Insider Detective stories about little old people who are trying to keep misapplied justice from hurting the kids in their community. Neither of these types of stories are good or bad on their own. They're different kinds of storytelling framework and they serve different purposes.

But, if you find yourself really gravitating to certain kinds of mysteries and really put off by other kinds, and you're trying to express why, this might be a framework that's useful for you. If your gender is Boy Detective, but you absolutely loathe cop stories? This might be why.

(PS: @anim-ttrpgs was posting about their game Eureka again, and that got me to make this post- thank them if you're happy to finally see it. Eureka is designed as an Outsider Detective simulator, and so the rules actively forbid you from playing as a cop- they're trying to make it so that you have limited resources and have to rely on your own competence. It's a fantastic looking game and I can't recommend it enough.)

(PPS: I'm probably going to come back to this once I finish Psycho-Pass with my partner, because they said I'd probably have Thoughts.)

(PPPS: Encyclopedia Brown is an Insider Detective, and that's why no one likes him. This is my most controversial detective take.)