#i just needed to explain why it isn't a viable solution for everyone and why actual good usable social platforms are still important

[taffywabbit]

"why not just make your own website?"

with the announcement of cohost's death and amidst all the other tumultuous shit currently going on with social media as a concept (i am AMAZED twitter has survived this long given the circumstances), one suggestion that i've been hearing a lot is "we should just go back to the good old days of personal websites. let's all just make neocities pages!!"

(this is gonna be a long one sorry)

and like. idk! it's certainly something i've considered, i think it would be a fun thing to have, but it also feels like the equivalent of "capitalism sucks so let's all just run off into the woods and live in a cabin outside of society" to me. like it would be nice, it would be fun, but it doesn't ultimately solve the actual problems that are present with the modern internet, it just evades them. more importantly in my case and many others, it does not really help people who rely on the modern internet and the connections they're able to make there for their income. sure i can make a website and host my art and blog posts there, but who's going to see it? i can't build a consistent audience and make a living off of random passersby who peek at my website once, say "huh, neat!" and MAYBE add it to an RSS feed or whatever if they really like it. there's minimal potential for meeting and impressing new people outside my existing circles if i don't ALSO still have some manner of social media platform to promote the website on.

a lot of the "solutions" i see people proposing for the slow, painful decline of social media as a user experience keep coming back to old-fashioned, more isolated/insular systems. we miss forums, we miss personal webpages, we miss newsletters, etc etc. but like... those things were ideal in the "old web" because the old web was more about sharing hobbies and interests with whoever happened to pass by and check them out, and even just USING the internet was a niche hobby in and of itself for a lot of people. if you wanna be kinda cynical about it (and not unjustifiably so), web 2.0 is much more blatantly business-oriented, and its algorithms and carefully crafted UX's are primarily meant to funnel you towards viewing ads and spending money on products. looking at it that way, it sure does suck and Everything Was Better Before! but the modern web is ALSO more powerful than anything before it for just like. connecting people. spreading information and news. showing your art/music/writing/thoughts/etc to strangers who never knew you existed an hour ago. putting the tools to reach out to someone and tell them you think they're cool right there on the same website where their art is hosted, just a comment or a message away.

if you're able to avoid patterns of engagement-bait and obsessing over follower counts as a measure of self-worth (a big "if", i realize, but i view it like installing an adblocker - it's just kind of a basic prerequisite for modern internet safety and survival), a lot of these systems can genuinely be really positive and life-changing in ways that were simply not possible 20 years ago! almost all of my current closest friends are people I met through sharing our art on platforms like Twitter who were complete strangers at the time. all of the art clients that regularly pay my bills and support my work came from places like that too! the "social" part of "social media" is really what makes it ultimately worth keeping around in any form, and makes the pursuit of a Good social media platform still valuable.

there's a lot to love about the old web - its aesthetics, simplicity and freedom for personal expression - but every time someone says "just delete your socials and make a personal website" i am forced to confront the fact that i could never do what i currently do or be the person i am on the old web. if i was stuck hanging out in my own little space and only ever interacting with people who openly and loudly share my interests, i couldn't support myself with art full-time, i probably would never have met the kind and quiet strangers who are now my best friends and have made me who i am, and i'd just generally get a lot less insight into the vast range of experiences and perspectives that exist outside of my own. my life would be on a fundamentally different trajectory in countless ways without the advent of web 2.0.

and that's not to say "well twitter and facebook and tumblr all suck but you kinda still have to hand it to them" cuz you don't, obviously. they're corporations, and their job is to take the personalities and thoughts and art of the people who use their products and try to scrunch it all into something uninform and marketable that generates profit and pleases their shareholders. but like, you CAN still make a good thing out of them! these websites are tools just as much as geocities or myspace or IRC used to be. and the one thing these newer tools are pretty much all REALLY good at is discoverability. if you're just a hobbyist at the things you wanna share on the internet, then you likely don't have a lot of use for those tools, and perhaps you WOULD genuinely be happier just keeping a personal blog site or hanging out in private groupchats or sticking to specialized federated Mastodon instances or whatever. it just isn't feasible for me, and there are a LOT of people in my same situation. my entire industry of online freelance artists barely existed 20 years ago, and the web culture of that era is largely incompatible with my continued survival in the mid-2020s. i would LOVE to run off and live in the woods in concept, but all my survival skills are adapted for city living and i would just eat the wrong berry and die out there. i want- i NEED people to try and improve the spaces we're in, and support better forms of social media (like what cohost was trying and largely succeeding to do!) instead of just complaining that it all sucks, everything was better when we were kids, and digging ourselves little holes to hide in. much like all the other problems and frustrations and systemic issues of the world we live in, the modern web isn't going to go away if you just ignore it, so we may as well try to make it better for everyone.

anyways tl;dr i probably WILL make a neocities at some point. it could be fun, even if it doesn't help my career stability or whatever. but i do also need ALL THE SOCIAL PLATFORMS I USE FOR MY JOB TO STOP EXPLODING PRETTY PLEASE, and failing that, some actual half-decent alternatives that aren't going to fizzle out in a month would also be great thanks ✌

[claudemblems]

Honestly I don't perceive it as the character's deaths were for nothing. Rather I see it as Isayama saying how genocide will never lead to something good or to a viable solution. Eren commited genocide and accomplished peace for several, several centuries. He gained time and helped his friends live peaceful lives (which was what he always said he wanted to do, as downright unacceptable as his methods were), however, while using a tool such as mass genocide to achieve his peace, he set in stone an inevitable and rather violent future for the next generations. What I think I made of the ending is that we can't expect everlasting peace if the procedure to get to it was so bloody and inhuman. Actually, we can't expect everlasting peace at all.

I think my perceptions of their deaths (talking about Jean, Armin, Levi, y'know, all of them) would have been different if they died due to the conflict that resurfaced, however they died of age, which completely changed it for me. As hard as everyone in survey corps fought for peace, eventually it was going to shatter, because humans are not only different but inmensly cruel, not to mention the bases of this gained peace were murders and violence, said bases could dwindle easily. And even if I'd liked for peace to last forever in the aot world, I don't think that would've been a realistic approach to the situation taking into account all the events that transpired.

Digging a little more into their deaths, I believe everyone got the closure (like Levi getting to see one last time the survey corps, thus helping him ease his lingering guilt and regret regarding their deaths) and evolution they needed. Everyone's deaths served to settle centuries of peace to come, however as I said, peace is hardly an everlasting blessing, which is why in my opinion weighting if whether their sacrifices achieved peace or not to assign a value to their deaths (and lives, for that matter) is something a little severe, as the term 'meaningless' is a little harsh for me.

Of course the ending has errors and is far from perfect. For example, I think that the topics of peace, violence and life at the end (talking about paradis getting destroyed centuries later) couldn't possibly be well explained in two panels, which is a huge downside.

(I have to say though, whether someone liked the ending or not, it is pretty fun to discuss so that's a pro!)

I don't think it ruined the series for me, even if I was a little confused when I first read it, I just needed some time to think about it. This is just my opinion tho! (you are the first person I've ever told my thoughts on this because I'm scared of pissing someone off :( however I feel safe on your blog so I said screw it lol) And I understand and respect if you didn't like the ending! I just, idk, felt like expressing myself 'cause I never do in fear the fandom might kill me. If you don't want to answer this long thing, don't worry! Thank you for reading this tho, please take care!!!

Like I mentioned before, I haven't been in the fandom for many years like everyone else, so I'm not really happy or angry at the ending. It's just there, and even if I think maybe it could have gone differently, I have no desire to attack Isayama for the decisions he made in his series. And yeah, don't worry about making me mad (or anyone else, for that matter)! I still don't know anything about Ymir and everything leading up to the end of the series, so it's not like I feel particularly strong about its conclusion. I agree with what you mean about it staying realistic, and you make a good point with saying how Eren committing genocide isn't going to bring peace with it. I think Isayama still somehow could have found a middle ground where it shows the reality of war but also left the readers satisfied. I think it's just a problem I have with manga endings in general--there's so much build up throughout several volumes within the series, and the story is having to wrap up in a couple volumes or less. The deaths of the characters shouldn't have a value behind them, that I understand, but with the hint of titans maybe coming back, I guess it just makes me and others wonder what the point is. Like, what makes Eren's story special? If the cycle is going to be repeated, what makes Eren's life and leagcy that much different than everyone else who has gone through/who will experience titan rule? Tbh I'm just more confused than anything but once the rest of the series gets animated it will probably clear up some confusion lol

Basically, I don't have a like or dislike for the ending, and I think it's just hard in manga series to create a really satisfying and concise ending. People who can't handle someone else having a different opinion shouldn't be on the internet or fandoms in general. Feel free to express how you feel. Don't let the toxic people tell you what to think!

[acostarsandwritings]

I'm sorry but that's what you took from this story? More so, you do realize you're watching a Netflix crossover, not even just an adaption?

Sit with me here because this take is bullshit and I'm gonna explain to you why. (warning for potential spoilers).

The darkling is not some sort of martyr. He is LITERALLY the person who created the fold*, against the advice and wishes of his own peers. This is not some (half) organized BLM protest (I assume your own analogy was meant to be thinly veiled as well), this is one (1) dude thinking he has the right to change the world. The books deliver this a tad differently, but you're talking about the series so I'll indulge you - the darkling did NOT do this with respect to his peers. He did it with a desire for power and revenge. Specifically, he did this with the intent to wipe out the Ravkans. Does that rhetoric sound familiar to you? Because I certainly think I recognize that in "the recent events" you mention. The time line in which this story takes place doesn't even have an oppressive government anymore - grisha are revered and, dare I say, spoiled - personal preferences aside, I'd definitely pick their treatment over the one the 'normal' Ravkans get. The entire take that the Darkling is somehow fighting against injustice is literally, canonically, outdated by hundreds, if not thousands of years. In this story, the Darkling IS the injustice. The only systemic 'racism' in this story is the Fjerdan-Grisha dynamic and the fact that Ravka is at war with, well.. Basically all of their neighbors except Kerch.

SECOND. Are you just.. Willingly stepping over our main protagonist? Either in the books or the series, Alina experiences a shitton of prejudice or even outright racism (the half Shu thing in the series wasn't.. Tastefully done, but it does succeed in its message. Even a savior will be vilified if their skin color is 'wrong'). It's not like Alina went "welp, guess I just kill everyone". She doesn't turn against the Darkling because of personal preferences, she turns against him because he lied about who he was AND because he is the literal reason the divide exists in the first place. The Darkling is the one wanting to keep - nay, expand! - the fold. He isn't some poor chap who got his feelings hurt, he is a villain. A literal one. This is no "a bit close to the edge ay", this is "dude fucking calm down you don't need to end the world". There's a difference, you know. Technically mass murder might solve our problems, but I doubt it's a good or even viable solution in the long run. Though, who am I to judge 🤷‍♀️

Third, you have seen one (1) season. One. You apparently haven't read the books, which is fine - I don't think they should be held next to each other like that - but that means you're jumping to conclusions, forming an opinion on a story that is very clearly not done yet. The entire point of the book IS a change, but you don't know that yet because you haven't seen/read the rest of it. This is some Fox News level jumping to conclusions here. Adding to that, Shadow and Bone/Six of Crows is not and was never intended to be a dystopian novel. It is a fantasy book. It's YA, it has dystopian elements, but it is not a dystopia. It's "just" a world like any other.

Also, are you seriously comparing revolutionary movements (and yes, I count blm in that too) with a literal mass murderer?? Someone who altered his country for the objectively worse?

Tldr - you're misunderstanding the story.

*the creation of the Fold was a side effect, I know this - however, using forbidden magic that Will Probably Kill You and disrupts the space around you for the sole purpose of creating an army that can't be beaten does sound very genocide-y, no?