#like people aren't just charicatures of themselves

[jucomx]

Damn media literacy really is one of those skills where you can be blisfully unaware what it means but then just learning what it actually is (i.e. the first step in practicing a skill), is already enough to fundamentally change the way you experience the world.

[comicaurora]

Happy Glorious 25th of May. Thank you for getting me into the discworld books (at least in an indirect way). They have quickly become one of my favorite series of books, even if I've only read a handful of them. As for a question, what have been your biggest takeaways or lessons from the discworld books? Whether it be how you write, how you engage with stories, or even how you look at the world.

we got another one lads

It's a little hard to boil it down! The books cover so much ground, and I read them at such a formative age it's hard to tease out how much of me is made from them.

On the most basic level, I love how angry those books are. Every POV protagonist is seething at unfairness and injustice and this is never framed as a bad thing - just something that needs to be controlled, directed, weaponized.

I like that everything is a joke, but in-universe everybody is absolutely sincere. The characters are charicatures and punchlines because of their sincerely-held beliefs and ideals. Captain Carrot is shiny and literal-minded and perfection personified and it's funny because he really is that good. Nanny Ogg is an outrageously horny and boisterous old woman and it's funny because she's having such a good time with it, especially when contrasted with her stern and serious foil Granny Weatherwax, and it's funny because the two of them know each other incredibly well and deal with each other's eccentricities with the practice of decades. The dwarves are funny because they're goofy little guys with big beards that think about nothing but gold and new songs to sing about gold, and as the books go on, the complexities of a culture that looks like that punchline become the deepest and most fascinating element of the worldbuilding in the entire Disc. The world is mounted on the back of four elephants and we made a book called the Fifth Elephant, how wacky, hey let's casually integrate the worldbuilding consequences of massive deposits of perfectly-crisped organic matter caused by the collision of a planet-sized elephant with a planet-sized planet. The discworld tells a joke and then commits to the consequences with its entire ass, and I love that.

A lot of the characters are in some way one-of-a-kind and unprecedented, or at least appear to be on the surface because nobody like them has even been publicly known, and the stories frequently explore how these unique people navigate their existence without a roadmap and trailblaze the way for the people just like them to someday follow. People who break rules by existing and make the world question what purpose those rules serve if they aren't actually unyielding principles of reality. The dwarf gender cultural revolution, the female wizard, the golem given a voice, the entire existence of Susan Sto Helit. It produces a world that feels like it's absolutely full of protagonists, like every story is one-of-a-kind and every individual person matters and has the right to choose the way they want to live, no matter what anyone else thinks. can't believe some terfs really think these books are for them as if they aren't precision-built to tell them to go fuck themselves

The cast full of protagonists makes the crossover events a delight. All these characters existing in the same universe means they can just run into each other sometimes, and they're all such absolute weirdos that their interactions never fail to be absolutely incredible. The world feels very thoroughly lived-in, to the point where the stories sometimes almost feel like they're telling themselves.

they're just really fuckin good ok

[ilikelookingatthings]

The books and movies have gross Jewish charicatures, are pro slavery and Harry Potter ultimately joins the very group Voldemort had power over to uphold blood purity. Harry Potter is a deeply flawed and unethical franchise.

I get Harry Potter has flaws. Especially fantasic beasts where because it was a movie script and not a book it was clearly not thought out in implications. And even regular harry potter has some issues. I'm not going to deny that. But I do think there ARE reasons so many kids and especially lgbtqc people are drawn to the franchise on the regular harry potter end. And felt accepted by it or became more open to accepting people due to its influence. Flawed yes. But I do think it's a bit unfair to call if completely unethical when they DO promote alot of good things.

I Also don't think the books were proslavery as it was clear slavery was bad and that point was hammered home with dobby and it did bring up its difficult to take down due to how society normalized it for so long and the mental chain of that type of systematic slavery with the houselves on the surface level not wanting to be free. I do agree she could have stuck the landing on that more thoroughly since she brought up the topic. Even if in the background. Even if a apparently shewas going for a metaphors for lady's or house wives who don't want to be free even from abusive men...it diesnt change she didn't think through that there is actual slavery people could read into the houseelves situation which is obviously how most people read it over what she was thinking while writing. and how it might be good to try to resolve that a bit more.

It was the lady's first kid series. And it was pretty clear that voldemort was basically a neonazi while grindlewald was basically wizard hitler Nd both were badguys we aren't supposed to support at all. And that most deatheaters following that pureblood retoric were just trying to feel suppiour by putting others down, insecure and trying to cover it up, blend in. Or scrabbling to side with the powerful.

It was pretta clear we are suppoused to side against that pureblood supremacy stuff against the mud blood bull.

The franchise did have some good messages.

And I don't think it's fair to dismiss the good the franchise does have by by acting like its just the negatives. Or that the worst reading is the one it was meant to be read with.

That said I do think susptious readings are useful to take her off that pedestal so people stop taking what she says verbatim since sge obviously doesn't do enough research on things which people who don't have time to research themselves and thought she was a great allie got drawing into her arguments too easily. Not realizing the lady was getting trapped in her own echo chamber.

[box-dwelling]

The internet is like a high school is not a new observation but I do find it fascinating how much of it is directly tied to people trying to win past conflicts from that time in their life. I see so many examples of bullying from people who clearly used to bully their peers that the want to bully someone else and come up with a bullshit excuse as to why it's justified this time because they apply a perceived justifying label of who the bad people are like narcissist or psychopath. Then there's the manosphere types who view all women through the lense of high school mean girls as a justification for their violent misogyny. Even in more alternative circles Especially on tiktok, though this behaviour is absolutely not as harmful as the above, people will frame liking stuff that is honestly pretty mainstream as being anti establishment and use strawmen of a high school bully charicature to do it. That's probably reflecting real expirences but it's interesting that that's the chosen strawman I keep seeing when in the adult world those types of people aren't the actual ones in power. I think there's also an element of misogyny here because it normally reflects the mean girl Regina George architype of bullying that is distinctly feminine instead of the more masculine archetypes of bullying which tend to get treated as a cliche way more than a reflection of reality where as the mean girl is presented as an ever present spector. There definitely an element of the death of counter culture in here too. When the tumorsus growth of mainstream capitalism continues to absorb all media and blunten it's edges, in order to differentiate ourselves we have to create a fightable enemy because it becomes impossible to fights the real one because you are forced to participate in it.

Some of this may be caused by teenagers themselves expressing their schoo yard dynamics online as well as off but I've seen enough adults play into this to feel that a decent number of them have this almost arrested development around adolescence. It makes sense, high school can often be traumatic and is also a major stage of development of identity.

I can't claim this isn't an aspect I deal with too. My high school was very diverse in terms of class and I'd be lying if I said it didnt colour my class politics. When all of the people who tormented you for years were rich, it makes it a lot easier to think they shouldn't have power. I'm morally lucky enough to have good justifications for that beyond my own trauma but if I'm being honest to myself it's not too different a thought process to the ones a lot of young men have that turn them into incels. This isn't a justification of their behaviour by any means, rather a cautionary tale to myself to remind me to continue to examine my own biases.

I do just find it interesting that so much of the behaviour I see can stem to high school trauma. And that fact both suggests to me that school reformation needs to be a priority if activism (in what way I'm unsure but it is definitely an area to look at) but also that I'm really really scared of what is coming in our near future as children are brought up on Andrew Tate and ethically questionable influencers. If that is colouring their behaviour now, even if they grow out of it, the effect they have on their peers may not be something so easily grown from. Maybe if we're fortunate it will be an equally strong force opposing those harmful values but it also may not be. It may be harmful in its own way and I hate that this generation of children is going to be a case study for this