#posts that make me rethink my worldview actually

[kooki914]

How do you think would Noelle and Ralsei interact with each other if they got the chance? What would their relationship bring out of the other?

This is something I've given a lot of thought to, and something I'm still salty wasn't explored at all in Chapter 2. So this post is both going to answer your question as well as be my excuse to write an essay about these two.

The thing is, Noelle and Ralsei are narrative foils to each other. That probably sounds weird on account of the fact that they never interact, but both mechanically and through dialogue, we see parallels form between them. They're both enigmatic, mysterious, while keeping up friendly appearances, while also being literal or figurative royalty in their respective worlds (Noelle is from a rich family and is adored, Ralsei is a prince with no subjects). They're both love interests to the leads (yes, to Kris and Susie BOTH, the snowgrave route is essentially an exploration of a toxic friends-to-lovers but I'm not getting into that here), and they're both rife with religious symbolism, as well as the fact they're both prey animals (in a world where boss monsters like Toriel and Asgore can look more lion-esque, Ralsei's decidedly goat-ish appearance is kind of striking to me). They have the same heal spell (a pray to light) and they're both "passive" in that kind of way a mage usually is in RPGs.

Noelle's arc mainly centers around agency, while Ralsei's arc mainly centers around identity. For all the struggles she faces, Noelle doesn't really have that... crisis of character that Susie and Ralsei are prone to. Even in the snowgrave route, she doesn't question herself, she questions Kris. And, while Ralsei IS an obedient doormat, it's not out of a lack of agency (he shows us as much when he puts his foot down right before the kids open a fountain), it's an active choice he KNOWS he can simply... Not Do (as evidenced by how upset he is with Susie's behaviour in chapter 1 and his epiphany about it in chapter 2, he essentially equates mean behaviour to Purposefully making people around you suffer, instead of a personality quirk or showing of emotion).

It's interesting to think about how they'd complement one another. Not even strictly in a character arc sense (I'll get to that), but just in a... character interaction sense. Noelle has this pattern of putting the spotlight on other people. Even when she talks about herself it's always framed as a way to lift up those around her, while Ralsei has this sneaky way of getting to know you without you even realising (if the rooms he made for Kris and Susie are anything to go by). I think this would result in a dynamics where Noelle (passively, almost accidentally) allows Ralsei to open up in a more genuine way, while Ralsei still tends to Noelle's needs like he does for everyone else.

It's also interesting from a worldbuilding sense. We've seen Ralsei not give a flying fuck about Anyone that isn't directly connected to the prophecy, both for humour reasons and for horror reasons (as seen in the snowgrave route), so giving him a friend that's 1) a lightner, 2) not part of the prophecy, and 3) trying to actually know him on a personal level - it'd probably cause him to actually rethink his worldview. If someone like Noelle, someone who's got nothing to do with the prophecy, can be an important person to him and a good friend to people she doesn't *need* to care about, then why can't he? Can he be someone outside the prophecy? Is his identity and purpose not confined to this, and what does that mean for him in the long run?

And, on Noelle's side of things, Ralsei would probably be a healthier outlet for that feeling of nostalgia she's so addicted to. With him around, she's allowed to just be a kid again. No appearances to keep up, no expectations to fulfill, he's a fresh start and a new friend that she's allowed to be her authentic self around because his existence is essentially rooted in tending to the inner child of all the lightners he comes across. And maybe then she'll be able to let go of the past. Maybe, though viewing her childhood through an outsider's eager point of view, she can see how far away it is, and how she doesn't NEED it to be happy. Things can't be the same, and maybe that's a good thing. Maybe they can be better.

Overall, there's also a... vague "burden of femininity" they both have. They take on emotional labour even when they don't have to, just because that's what's expected of them. I so badly want a Dark Fun Gang-esque arc with these two where they defect from the team and just decide to be bad guys on their own terms for a while. Just because they can, just to see what it brings out of them. And, they'd be complete dorks about it of course, but it'd be nice to see them breaking their moulds with people they don't feel judged by, with friends they don't feel the need to impress because they're already so similar to.

There's this one bit of dialogue I wrote for them for one of my AUs, specifically in the above scenario where they decide to be bad guys for a bit, and I feel I need to share it here because it puts into words something I can't without taking away from the feels of it:

[lovevalley45]

my top books of 2023

i said i would maybe do a post like this and decided to actually bite the bullet n make one. i don't have a goodreads so i gotta get my thoughts about the books i read out there somewhere. warning that i technically did this in reverse order, so the reviews somehow get more hinged from the beginning. enjoy!

5. Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth

so generally, my rating of books is not totally quality based, but based on my personal rating of “how fucking rooted in my brain did this book end up for me”. this is one of those where i could sit and do a whole english major ass analysis on many aspects of the book if i didn’t have other essays to write. this is a strange book (affectionate) following abby in the wake of her mother-in-law’s death. it’s got everything: mommy issues, food as a love language in a fucked up way, women’s wrongs. it’s hard to describe why exactly it stayed in my head without spoiling the end, but i will slap my “for lovers of the locked tomb” label on here.

4. Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake

i usually prefer fiction to nonfiction books, but i made an expectation for this book about fungi. those who know, know. it made me rethink how i view fungi, a worldview i thought didn’t need challenging. i don’t have much to say on this one, mostly by virtue of it being nonfiction, but as with most of the books on this list in one way or another, i have a story to go with it. this is the only book on this list i read while attending my current college, mostly because i didn’t have much time to devote to other books. but when i bought this from the bookstore off campus, i left the store and immediately got told how good this book was from a random person from the cafe outside. and it did live up to the hype, which is saying something.

3. Chef’s Choice by TJ Alexander

often, i am a very big romance novel person, yet this year i didn’t get around to reading too many. this book was one i had anticipated since reading the book that came before it, chef’s kiss, which i also highly recommend. the protagonist luna pretends to date the grandson of a famous chef, jean-pierre, and the two have to prepare for his grandfather testing his knowledge of his recipes while they are both hopeless at cooking. they are very cute, and it’s the first romance novel i’ve read involving two trans people, which also meant that it presents two very different experiences of being trans that i enjoyed seeing explored in this book. all in all, worth me having to find this book in reno to buy, of all places.

2. How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

i commonly deem this book as “the one that gave me a temporary fear of puppets”, which i count as a compliment given it is a horror novel. but the heart of the book lies in the protagonists, siblings louise and mark as they attempt to sort through their childhood home after their parents die unexpectedly. in packing up their things and preparing to sell the house, they unearth forgotten trauma and, as alluded, deal with more supernatural threats. if you love grady hendrix and somehow haven’t read this book, this is a great one. (but maybe not if you’re afraid of puppets).

1. Origin in Death (Book #21 in the …in Death series) by J.D. Robb

i read nearly half of the books in the …in death series this year, so it’s expected that one of them would end up on my top books of the year. this book starts with the series’ main protagonist, eve dallas, investigating the deaths of an infamous plastic surgeon and his son and falling into a conspiracy into their more dubious affairs. if you were around for my famed clone spiral of may this year, you can probably guess how that ends up. while that book did indeed send me into a spiral, it’s also an important case for the rest of the series, marking it as crucial reading to understanding the story of eve dallas and an interesting exploration into the implication of cloning humans.

[babysprouseisart]

Every story ever has its end or the summary of the thoughts on the past #sprousehart era and attempts to change the attitude of others to this illusionary world

Dear fellows, from the very first days of the origin and further existence of mankind on the planet, in each period more and more foundations, irreversible phenomena and laws in nature or the society in which man lived and continues to live appeared. Time is fleeting, night turns to morning, year to year, and every story ever has its end. You can object, say that this is complete nonsense, but unfortunately everything in our world is natural and therefore in the same way one story of two wonderful people - Lili Pauline Reinhart and Cole Mitchell Sprouse - ended.

Their relationship was and will remain one of the most beautiful and unlike in comparison with others, at least based on what I could witness, love story. And even though this love story began seemingly banal with an audition for the role and the set, it was so real, amazing, which many could dream about, with its special feature of gradual disclosure, so enticing, and that is why it probably resonated so much, along with other reasons.

Like any other relationship, this relationship was based on many things and included many reasons for existence. Starting with a slight interest in each other, first liking and flirting, then there was a strong and almost immediate attraction to each other that they both talked about, a passion visible in the way they acted out scenes together and in glimpses of information from others. Then, after some time, the romantic charm passed, and a new stage began – getting used to each other, building a joint life, adapting to the peculiarities and shortcomings of the partner, and it is during this time the couple tries to create a happy and satisfying relationship for each. Accordingly, everyone got a desire to stand out from the other, to be significant not only in the relationship, but also outside of it, which is why they kept their privacy and wanted everyone to perceive them as separate individuals. They clearly tried to control what they shared with the world, and gradually the amount of what they shared increased. We were lucky to witness many, even small, moments in their lives. We were allowed to see the whole development, although some of it was very hidden, starting with the sarcastic banter on Twitter, the tempting 'Tempt me!', then multiple photos of fans with them, then supposedly random photos of Cole, with Lili in the background, or other way around, then many other breadcrumbs, then expanding of the circle of friends where his friends are now hers and vice versa, family meetings following by huge support to the certain time, then an infinity of her photos taken by him, so divine and beautiful, as well as photos taken by her of him, then numerous long or not so long trips to various places, the first vocation trip together which was made public, then 'No comment!', then more words about love in public media, birthday wishes, comments, bouquets just like that and on special days, 72 roses, chocolate-covered strawberries, the way they were baking together, him making a grilled cheese for her, them watching the sunset at Debby's and the other times we haven't seen, the time when Antelope Valley has become an indicator, the most tender words about each other, endless heart eyes, her inability to stop sitting on his lap, and his habit of touching her shoulder, neck, jokes understandable only to them, the words of others about them as if they are friends for 20 years already, knowledge of each other's body language, bragging about wonderful sexy times and the beauty of each other, giving cute nicknames, comfort, joint red carpet moments, him shaking her of joyness, constant support and much more, what we could obviously notice in social networks, interviews, after videos/photos of paparazzi, almost complete idyll at first glance and so on. All this is certainly only what we were allowed to see or what we guessed having observed various facts and over time it has gotten more obvious, and it was an insanely beautiful experience to be a spectator of all this for which I am grateful that is why I sincerely wish myself and all of you to look at it from the point of view that you need to smile because it happened and not cry because it's over. Nevertheless sometimes if you get too involved you can start looking at it through the prism of pink glasses of love and admiration, enjoying every moment they directly or indirectly shared with us, and accordingly, the impression of a fairy tale is being formed that does not quite correctly reflect reality and it does not allow us to perceive the other part on the other side of the screen/social networks, because we simply do not see it. However, I don't want anyone to take it as if I believe that everything they shared was untrue and false, completely out of the blue. All I want to convey to any reader is that everything we saw was only in an unreal bubble of illusions, since the Internet and social networks, which are, after all, this very bubble in its essence, which we ourselves and they decided to form, allowing us to take it as they want and this is normal, and life is very far from perfect or dreamlike. That is to say life is such an unpredictable thing, where everything is justifiably natural and sometimes things just don't work out the way we would like them to, including relationships which are also a complex structure that is not easy to build correctly, sometimes even with a strong attraction and a strong sense of love, there are things that cannot be corrected or changed. As well as you cannot change the essence of a person and his worldview, his personality, internal or external qualities, his behavior, his views on life and goals, his mistakes and position in society, loss of trust, his moral and physical endurance, other side things like sharing very little time for the second half in connection with business or temporary work, unwillingness to accept any conditions, commitment, settling down or restriction of something, lack of compromise, fading feelings because of passed desire and passion, external factors, especially if we are talking about a public couple/popular people, such as dramas in social networks, created by fans or family/friends, stress from the strong involvement of others or non-acceptance of partner selection by relatives, and so on. Just sometimes if after a while two people failed to get accustomed to each other, as if a plant were transplanted into a new soil or some organ to the human body, thanks to some external or internal features, obstacles, be it custom qualities or external influence on each other with the constant tries for the reconstruction of another and over time awareness of the fact that what has been created by the supreme cannot be altered and adjusted for something else, becoming more and more negative, when one of them in its content can no longer learn to cope with the environment and the further continuation of the joint work of the struggle can lead to the bad conditions of both, with exhaustion from this struggle and, accordingly, to the death of cells. And all this exhaustion for whatever reason can also be theoretically and philosophically equated to the bowels of the earth and depleted sources. After all, a person get used to using fresh water, the earth's mineral resources, eating plants and fruits, vegetables, buying things, and so on, but sometimes it happens that this is either limited or ends and nature is no longer able to provide us with anything, after constant giving, and in return receiving only harm or damage. This is a very complex science and this is a life where, as I already said, many things are not the way we picture them to be. So many interpretations and/or reasons can and could be hidden behind all these failures/ends/dissensions/decays/breakups/bad moments in life, and I cannot even list all the options, but I have some general considerations on the specific occasion, but I do not want to start the speculation now and go into details about why and how I think the end of this love story that we all loved happened, cause it is not my business and I am no one to judge someone or even dare to talk about it when I am not them or relative/friend to any of them and I haven't seen the actual period of their relationship and how it was going from the beginning to the end except my own representation of everything based on this social-media bubble, and each of you can have your own thoughts and draw your own conclusions. However, it goes without saying that even after any obstacles, failures and heart and soul break and with the passage of time, everything constantly takes place to change in any way, people change, the behavior change, the attitude change, and so on, one moment the doors are closed, in the other you open them or they are opened for you so in the end a person finds their happiness and purpose despite previous mistakes and shortcomings.

The penultimate thing I want to say is that obviously, after all this, you are already starting to think about something and I really hope so, given what I said about life and bubbles of unreality in our time, and as you gain experience in this fandom and being a fan very much involved in all of this it can be very useful for us to eventually rethink how much we were involved and how much energy we were giving this every time, and I have already made a whole post about this. And particularly good for me were  the recent events when there is no particular food for thought and to be involved, I'm more and more alienated from the lives of other strangers, and the more time passes, the more relaxed I began to react to many things, although it also sometimes was hard to deal with all the drama and speculation, constantly think through all sorts of logical outcomes, since I am such a person by nature and I cannot be calm without a logical conclusion, and I am still digesting the whole situation happening since the beginning of this year with the fandom and the relationship of these two people, however, as much as I would not like to clearly represent everything and have a clear picture now it does not matter, the main thing is that it was and it just needs to step over, swallow and not give too much attention to this, because unfortunately we could not control the whole situation, we could not prevent what happened and what could have happened just because we are not the supreme or these same people and it is not our business.

In conclusion, even if some may think of me as a soulless person or that I do not care about others, know that this is far from it, I just try and will try to find a way out of the situation, reorganize and look at everything objectively and with a grain of salt because I believe that this is the right decision to be detached in any way from someone else's experiences, especially from those who are so far from us, and bad moments, so as not to have any attachment, hope and faith, so that it does not hurt us later. But I am certainly an emotional person and my heart just bursts with pain when I see that many people strongly bring down themselves and suffer from the fact that there was some kind of non-related to them co-ordinal change, although this is not the end of the world, and therefore I consider it my duty to try to somehow distract some of you and calm down on this account, as once I was helped by others and my own search for the right attitude.

[baixueagain]

Does it seem like "anti discourse" is generational? Where there seems to be more antis that are zoomers than antis that are millenials?

[sidenote, this is primarily in an American context]

I’m kind of wondering if it’s because millennials are old enough to remember the early internet. I’ve also seen people tie it to post-9/11 culture, which has seen an increase in an inherently authoritarian cultural mindset which promotes the idea that public good is best maintained by closely monitoring people’s activities and behaviours. Millennials are also old enough to remember what life was like before that, and to remember the way security tightened and freedom decreased over the early 00′s as a result of 9/11. For a lot of us, this marked our teen years and young adulthood, as our generation came of age watching freedoms being slowly stripped from us.

Gen Z meanwhile is too young to remember any of that happening, or they weren’t even born yet. Most of them were unaware of the major cultural shift that took place during the Bush years, so they basically take the presence of high-security and low-privacy culture as a given. It also makes them think that it’s okay to demand that strangers divulge personal information about themselves, and to become immediately suspicious of people who simply don’t feel like sharing that information. Finally, the normalisation of a high-security and low-privacy ethos makes it seem completely natural that there should be Powers That Be who mandate what behaviours are and aren’t acceptable.

At the same time, though, there has been greater cultural attention to both social justice movements and the critical consumption of media, especially in the past 10 years. So a lot of zoomers have grown up in a culture that is actively talking about the impacts of racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, ableism, etc. Now that’s actually a really positive thing, but now that most zoomers are teens (or entering their teens), they’re gonna do what teens always do and get really over-excited about it, and start applying it recklessly to anything under the sun. This isn’t even covering the impact of schooling, which has seen a severe decline in teaching critical thinking skills in curriculums in favour of rote memorization. 

So as a result, Gen Z is (in broad strokes) a generation that has grown up taking Big Brother for granted, who are coming of age during a period of social unrest and social justice movements across the world, and who are often clever and passionate but haven’t been taught critical thinking skills. Needless to say, that seems to me like the perfect recipe for fanpol.

Obviously there’s more to it than this, and a good deal of it probably also has to do with the rise of helicopter parenting, as well as personality type and personal history. But those are just my guesses as to what overall generational changes led to zoomers being more pro-fanpol.

Furthermore, I should note that a lot of teens have trouble with nuance no matter what time period or generation it is - teenagers are pretty naturally drawn to extremes of thought and opinion. Most folks learn to use nuance and see the grey areas as they grow older, so no doubt that’ll help a lot of current young antis/fanpol mellow out and rethink some things. The ones you need to watch out for are the ones who don’t grow out of their black-and-white your-business-is-my-business worldview, because I would guess that they’ll be the ones who are likely to support authoritarian leaders and policies throughout adulthood.

[chariot313]

Western social media has no respect for Japanese online artists - and it’s killing online art

The visual arts have evolved to suit the most popular medium of each era. In nowadays’ case, the internet is the go-to method of sharing the fruits of one’s labour). However, as stated in that tweet thread of mine you can see if you scroll down a bit (assuming you’re viewing this post on chariot313.tumblr.com) different cultures have different attitudes towards how their customers react to their products. This include you know what fuck the formalities, I’ll just say it: The exclusively western concept of someone seeing something they like online and hitting the share button to stimulate the “Haha, upvotes go ‘brrr’!” dopamine in their smooth-ass lizard brain will be the death of online Japanese artists. Or rather, it has been already, and you would know that if you’ve ever seen an artist’s Twitter bio be in mostly Japanese save for one sentence in English; “Reprint is prohibited.”.

If you want to hear me rationalize the absurd claim I just made, feel free to click the “Keep reading” button. Otherwise, turn back now and save yourself from me possibly wasting your time.

Alright, you’ve chosen to stick with me. Just remember, you asked for this.

Introduction

Social media as a whole is based around sharing (posting, uploading, submitting, tweeting, blogging, streaming etc.) and other’s reactions to what one has shared (views, likes, subscribers, favorites, followers, upvotes, retweets, reblogs, crossposts, etc.).

However, miscommunication and culture shock due to language barriers and cultural differences is one of the many factors that can negatively affect one’s experience on social media. For example, the Japanese artist community, active on sites such as Twitter, Pixiv, NicoNico Seiga, FC2 blogs, etc.. Twitter is mostly inhabited by English-speaking users. Here in the west, our main motive for sharing something on social media (such as art) is for fame and recognition. However, over in the East, most online artists only upload their works to the internet for personal use. I’m not saying one cultural attitude towards sharing art is better than one another, but when these two worldviews collide, the culture shock can negatively affect the careers of artists who are unaware of the other culture’s differing views on sharing art.

So, I’ve listed numerous social media platforms below and I’m going to elaborate on how each of them contributes to the alienation and discouragement of Japanese artists.

DO NOT WITCH-HUNT OR HARASS THE CULPRITS I’VE LISTED AS EXAMPLES; THEY ONLY SERVE TO BACK UP MY ARGUMENT

Twitter

Go into the twitter search bar and type in the name of an anime character (usually female). What do you find? Most likely an account named after said character that does nothing but post unsourced fan art of said character with cheesy “in-character” captions on them.

Exhibit A [NSFW]

Exhibit B [NSFW]

Exhibit C [very NSFW]

Aside from that, Twitter isn’t that bad in this regard, as a lot of the art that gets stolen is originally uploaded to Twitter anyway. But I’m just getting started. 

Wattpad

Ah yes, Wattpad. One of the “trinity” of fan fiction communities (the others being fanfiction.net and AO³), featuring many different stories with varying degrees of readability. The problem is the option to add a picture to adorn your fanfiction, at which point most of the authors google “<fanfic subject> fan art” and use something from there without considering the repercussions. This causes Wattpad to be one of the top results when reverse image searching to find the source of some fan art, aside from another site I’ll mention later on...

Reddit

There’s a subreddit I often browse called r/ChurchOfJirou, a community for sharing anything relating to the character Kyouka from My Hero Academia (I mean come on, she’s like the cutest thing ever). A lot of the posts on that sub are sharing fan art of the aforementioned character. One of the rules in the sidebar is “always include the source in the title or the comments”. And most of the submissions make good on that rule. However, a lot of the posts are from Japanese artists on Twitter or Pixiv, and following the source link leads you to find the artist’s bio, which usually has something along the lines of “don’t repost my work”. And what’s more, the biggest offenders (of submitting art to the sub without OP’s permission) were the moderators of the subreddit. You know, the ones who are supposed to be enforcing the rules? I even got so fed up that I called it out, to which one of the mods replied,

“It doesn’t really make a difference, does it?”

Luckily, not all subreddits are like this. For example, other MHA-related subs like r/BokuNoShipAcademia or r/ChurchOfMinaAshido have moderators that are more considerate of artists’ wishes. Overall, Reddit is usually a hit-or-miss when it comes to this kind of thing. At best, you’ve got subs like the two I just mentioned which make sure to respect artists, and at worst you’ve got people trying (and failing) to edit out watermarks. Also, not to self-promote, but this tweet of mine represents this situation pretty well:

Imgur

Imgur isn’t that bad compared to the rest of these, but it’s a common one that people link to when asked for the source of whatever they’ve shared on Twitter or Reddit or whatever.

Amino Apps

Amino Apps is a strange case. I don’t know much about it since I’ve never used it, but from what I do know it seems similar to Reddit in that there are numerous communities for different niches. That said, judging from the way it clogs up Google image search results, I doubt OC art is posted there often.

YouTube

Now, you may be thinking, “How does a video site rip off others’ art?”. The answer is uploads of soundtracks. Look for any OST from a video game or anime on YouTube and the picture used for the video will likely be some fan art by a Japanese Pixiv artist, usually one that forbids reposts of their work. Not only that, but if the uploader did bother to add the source in the description, it’s usually not even a link to the actual source, more likely a link to Zerochan or Pinterest or something. Now take into account that some of these videos get millions of views. Imagine working hard on something, and some numbnuts takes it, slaps some music onto it, uploads it to YouTube, and gets millions of views while you get next to nothing in comparison.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B (re-upload; original had nearly 40 million views before it was copyright claimed)

Exhibit C

and many many others

Pinterest

Alright, this is the big one. When Pinterest isn’t giving recipes or wardrobe ideas to suburban white moms, it’s clogging up Google reverse image search, punishing anyone who just wanted to find the source of some cute fan art. I feel like this meme by ZebitasMartinexSi on Facebook sums it up:

For example, this piece of Legend of Zelda art by Twitter artist @_nomeri_ (I’ll just link to it, since it would be hypocritical of me to embed the image even though @_nomeri_’s bio warns people not to repost their art). Good art, right? Well, if you right-click and hit “Search Google for image”...

...yeah. Pinterest is a plague. It thrives on theft. Even worse is when someone will post fan art on Twitter/Tumblr/Reddit/etc. and have the nerve to say “IDK the source I found it on Pinterest ^_^”. Or worse yet, they link to Pinterest saying it’s the source.

Instagram

While many other sites rag on Instagram for its reposting of memes, it’s no better when it comes to reposting fan art, especially from Pixiv. I’ve seen lots of stolen pieces with fan fictions written in the description. Personally, if I were an artist, I’d rethink my career choice if I saw my art reposted on Instagram with a half-assed fanfic under it, so I don’t blame Japanese artists who close their Pixiv accounts after seeing that. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to prevent it from happening in the first place.

DeviantArt

DeviantArt is more “renowned” across the web for its niche circles of bizarre fetish art, but in its defence, there are some legitimately good pieces on there. If you do find a good one though, try checking to see if all of the uploader’s pieces have a similar overall art style, because if not, that’s a sure sign of someone passing off some Pixiv user’s art as their own, which is unfortunately fairly common on DeviantArt.

9Gag

Not a whole lot to say about 9Gag. I mean, it does contribute to reposting of art, but nothing really separates it from the others on this list, aside from its watermarks. At least the watermark gives away the fact that something was reposted.

Know Your Meme

You know that Zelda pic by @_nomeri_ I was talking about earlier? Well, to add insult to injury, it became an object-labelling meme.

Imagine putting hours into something and politely asking others not to repost it, only to find that some nincompoops on r/DankMemes made it into an object-labelling meme.

But this isn’t KYM’s fault, per se. Know Your Meme only documents memes; they do not create them. However, as someone who regularly browses the Know Your Meme image galleries, I can say that the image gallery has essentially become Know Your Fan Art (unlawfully reposted fan art, that is).

Redbubble

There’s an NSFW artist I follow on Twitter by the name of Nico-Mo. A while ago, his Pixiv account was suspended, and there were numerous pictures on there that he had not uploaded to his Twitter or DeviantArt, so I found a mirror of one of those pieces on Gelbooru and reverse-image searched in hopes of finding it on his Twitter. No such luck. What came up instead was a .png of the piece made into a sticker being sold on Redbubble. In fact, that’s one of the major reasons why artists disapprove of their art being reposted, as it may find its way onto a sticker or a T-shirt being sold as merch without the original artist giving consent nor the artist receiving so much as a single nickel.

Facebook

Surprisingly, I think Facebook is one of the least offending sites on this list. Still worth mentioning, though.

Funnyjunk

Like Imgur, Funnyjunk isn’t that bad compared to some of the rest of these, but this exchange in the comments of a repost of an MHA artist that deleted their account (not hard to see why considering people straight-up ignored the big-ass watermark at the bottom) is proof enough of western social media’s flippant attitude towards ruining online artists’ careers.

Aggregator imageboards such as Yande.re, Konachan, Danbooru, Gelbooru, Rule34, SankakuComplex, Zerochan, etc.

I don’t think I need to explain these. But like Imgur, these are what most people link to when asked for source instead of bothering to find the original post.

We Heart It

I don’t know much about “We Heart It”, but it seems to be a “Pinterest Lite” considering it clogs up image search almost as much as Pinterest does.

iFunny

Basically the same as 9Gag, in the sense that its watermarks are a dead giveaway.

4chan

I’m not sure if 4chan really “counts” among these, as it’s a chat board where nearly everything is impermanent anyway. However, I was once on an NSFW subreddit where one submitter used a 4chan thread to get Patreon-exclusive material from an artist to upload to the sub (even though one of the rules of the sub was “no paywall content”), so that alone earns 4chan its spot on this list.

Tumblr

Yes, not even Tumblr is innocent. Although I’m sure you knew that. Similar to what I said about Twitter, look up any blog named after a fictional character and it’ll likely be chock-full of unsourced fan art.

“Why is this even important?”

Because if an artist sees that their work is being reposted, depending on the artist, they may delete the original post when they wouldn’t have to if people had just respected their wishes. Now, if an artist wants their works gone from the internet for other personal reasons, that’s up to them and we should respect them for it. But artists taking down their works due to mass reposting is 100% preventable, which is why it’s sad. If you don’t respect an artist, they won’t create art. Simple as that.

“Why do you care so much?”

Eh, I’m just weird like that. It just ticks me off when anything online, whether it be art, or a video, or whatever, is lost. In my opinion, nothing hurts more than clicking a Pixiv link on an imageboard and being greeted with “The work was deleted or the ID does not exist.”.

“But lots of western artists forbid reposting of their art too!”

Indeed, that is correct. But while many artists of every nationality and culture frown upon reproduction of their work, it seems only western social media is responsible for reposting art in the first place. I mean, why else do you think Japanese artists are saying “Reprint is prohibited” in English when the rest of their bio is in Japanese? Because English-speakers are the ones reposting.

“But exposure can help an artist!”

Yeah, that’s true...

...but “exposure” doesn’t mean much if those “exposed” to one’s work don’t know or care who it came from.

And if you need even more reasons, look no further than these posts about the same topic by other blogs:

https://cranberrywitch.tumblr.com/post/143456002228/stop-reposting-art-from-japanese-artists

https://thegospelofnagisa.tumblr.com/post/143308182398

https://edendaphne.tumblr.com/post/163117317030/ive-been-wanting-to-make-this-educational-cheat

https://marklightgreatsword.tumblr.com/post/190056977650/discourage-art-theft-in-fandom-in-2020-dont

https://letusrespectpixivartistconsent.tumblr.com/post/92189994896/why-is-this-important

also, not to self-promote but I made a thread on Twitter on this topic about a month ago that you can check out here.

That’s all.

posted Jun 14; last edit Jun 21

[deathlygristly]

Hmm.

There’s a post on my dash about Libya from someone who I thought was a decent source. Libya seems to always be the subject that makes me rethink how much I trust people as sources.

Yeah....I went and looked up some of the Libyans I followed obsessively on Twitter in 2011. They are still there, still appearing human, and saying that yeah, things didn’t turn out the way anyone hoped but that they do still believe in the revolution, and that their intention back in 2011 was pure.

Also there’s no context to the pictures in the post on my dash, nothing explaining what actually caused the damage and when it happened. And the Libyans on Twitter seem much more concerned about Turkey’s military machinations and use of Syrian soldiers at the moment than what the US is doing.

Plus just in general I think you can’t really have a valid opinion on what’s been happening in Libya since 2011 if you don’t know who Khalifa Haftar is. And yeah, in all fairness, he was a CIA asset back in the day.

You gotta investigate everything, even if - no, especially if - you’re constructing a story from what little information you see that fits with your worldview and makes you feel self-righteous and confirms your identity. And I am including myself in this and who knows, maybe the Libyans that seem real and human to me are actually propaganda bots and I am completely wrong, but to the best of my current knowledge and ability to investigate and try to tell what’s human from what’s bullshit, the blood of the failure of the Libyan revolution is on many hands and many different countries, not just the US, not even just Western countries, and a significant number of Libyans really did want the UN/NATO to help them in 2011.

I will say that if they are propaganda bots, they are very sophisticated ones, and they seem complex and real and divided in opinion and to really care about human life and to be concerned with the well-being of their own country more than with pushing a particular narrative, and they post like real people and not like bots that are programmed to post hate and propaganda with an occasional human tender there to make it seem a bit more lifelike.

Also none of them have the reach for a hoax to be profitable, and as far as I can tell they haven’t asked for much in the way of money from their followers or been interested in fame. Also none of them claim to have an identity that would make them attractive to the internet left, like the story I saw earlier about an American dude who pretended to be a LGBT Syrian woman. They post in both Arabic and English, and I don’t think very many Americans are fluent enough in Arabic to do that, or would keep up the effort of using online translators for nine years with very little payoff to show for it. Plus they get targeted by trolls all the time, as opposed to trolling others. But still, hey, like I said, it’s impossible to be completely sure.

[icharchivist]

1- I love Lavi as much as the next dgm fan, but I'm really not amused by the whole Yuu thing. There's a lot of stuff my family say/do to me that triggers me. And I've explicitely told them that I hated it, explained it was triggering to me and got so sick of it I even snapped/used violence with my siblings when they kept doing it for years anyway and they still do it and just think it's a quirk of mine/I'm being weird. Kanda is obv very not amused by the crap Lavi says and Lavi is just like

2- 'omg Yuu-chan is so scary' 'heh I'm just gonna do it again' and keep doing it regardless of how many times Kanda insisted not getting called like that and making it clear he hated that. Actually scratch the me liking Lavi part, keep doing this shit and I'm gonna throw Hisoka at you

heey so look, i know you mean well but.

That was litterally my post, I was calling out Lavi for doing exactly that. I was calling Lavi a dumbass for doing exactly that. 

I keep on calling out Lavi’s flaws because it surprisingly works a lot about the kind of characters he is. he’s a guy who had been socially isolated most of his life and had always used jokes as a way to put distances with others people. The guy has no understanding of triggers and he had never realized he cared about what people feel until very late in the series. Of course for the likes of someone as emotionally and socially stunned as he is he just sees it a cheap laugh and not something to take into account. He does it again because he has no understanding of why it is having Kanda react this way and he just finds the fun of it, and besides it helps also creating a dynamic in which Lavi cannot get close on an emotional level to Kanda, which had always been keys to Lavi’s character considering he pushes people away emotionally speaking, had never learnt how to deal with it, and that’s why specifically his bound with Allen is particular because that’s why he’s been putting this back in question, and it’s not even something he realizes until far latter in the story.

On the greater scale it shows also Lavi’s lack of connection to humanity aside from “ink on paper” because he cannot see what a trigger can be. That’s what makes signifiant how he develops his own triggers as the story goes by and the moments he has to rethink his entiere lifepoint. Him disregarding Kanda’s triggers are part of the characters flaws that are required to understnad how much of a disconnect he had with humanity and how much he didn’t even consider others as people. which is something that is told to him in the dreamworld. Because it’s something he didn’t even realize he was doing. 

It’s a flaw. This is seriously a flaw from Lavi from understandable place, but a major flaw of not reading someone’s boundaries. Which is coherent with his whole character’s arc and actually especially at this point where you’re not supposed to know yet how much he distached himself from humanity, it’s clues spread around of how badly he handles social situation, a buildup for the reveals of the fact he doesn’t want to care for people and doesn’t want to empathize with them and that it’s why his character arc forcing him to do that specifically with Allen is shaking his worldview.

I know and i understand that triggers are a sensible subjects. that was the angle i took with my post about that specifically where I was poking fun at Lavi’s flaw, not at Kanda’s reaction, because this is peak “Lavi’s lack of decency” striking. 

And I get that it’s extremely personal. I have my triggers too and i have had people poking fun at them and crossing those boundaries. This is of course all alright to dislike him specifically for that. If that’s the deal breaker, good god, yeah, sure. You have no obligation to like Lavi even while understanding why he behave like that and personal reactions and reasons for why this dislike exist is completely valid, specifically on such a sensible topic.

But please consider that you’re saying that to someone who adore Lavi as a character so much both my url and my header are themed with this boy and that I was forced to make specific tags about my ramblings about him in particular. 

I specifically call him out on his flaws because those are stuff i consider flesh out his character. None of my fav are unproblematic on any aspect, and I freaking love their flaws even when they are harmful to others characters because that tells a massive story. 

And I want to be able to discuss said flaw and make fun of my favs for doing those specific flaws because that’s part of the reasons i appreciate the character arc it takes them through. 

So while i understand your frustration and your dislike of his action i seriously, seriously don’t need to be pointed out specifically something I was making fun of with him. I’m feeling like i’m justifying his behavior with this reply which i didn’t want to do because just saying “he’s dumb but i love him” seemed enough for me to not have to enter into “but here why it fits his character”. 

And more specifically i seriously, seriously have no interest in specifically having a flaw, that i pointed out as a flaw, being pointed out to me as a “and this flaws make that i dislike him”. My entiere blog is themed around his character, that doesn’t specifically feel like the best thing to read.

I’ve roasted Lavi for less. Lavi had been an insensitive prick since his first appearance. His full first arc was to completely look down on Allen and his trauma because he didn’t understand it, and he had to have a wake up call to change it. His reaction to Kanda is an extension of this specific character flaw i keep bringing up because it’s essencial to the understanding of his lack of empathy that comes from having never ever thought about how to process bounding with people.

When i’ve posted the Yuu scene, it wasn’t to laugh at Kanda’s expense about his triggers. It was specifically to laugh about Lavi being moronic for ignoring them. 

I’ve written hundreds of posts about Kanda’s triggers and how serious they are and are spreads over the course of the series. I’ve written hundreds of post on how Lavi is BAD with people to the point of being harmful to them. 

idk perhaps i get a little too fired up but like. I like discussing my favorite character’s flaws, especially major ones, because those are necessary steps on the journey! 

I wish i just didn’t have to justify it when i was just calling him out about it, and especially i’m not specifically into getting message to tell me how much it makes him unlikeable. 

so like. I get your feelings but please there are better ways to bring it up. Your feelings are 100% valid. It’s just. Guh, you know it’s my fav character what exactly are you expecting would be my reaction to that.

I’m not mad btw but i admit it frustrates me a bit. 

Please though take care.

[friedesgreatscythe]

I feel like one of the biggest letdowns and missed opportunities of most modern media that deals with Lucifer (specifically Lucifer, that FOX show) walking among us and just kinda... livin’ out his life in present day is how it gets filtered through some dumbass lazy writing (most often at the fault of men), where he’s just portrayed as a ~bad boy~ without any sense of intelligence or complexity or any actual depth to him. And quite frankly that’s just shockingly lazy. It takes absolutely zero creative effort to think of Lucifer as some brooding dudebro throwing an empty rebellion. It doesn’t do anything interesting or meaningful with his character, it doesn’t allow us to engage on any meaningful level with the character.

Most importantly, it completely removes any attempt or ability to make some insightful, emotional, dare I say sympathetic comparisons between the story of Lucifer (which doesn’t just have to be based on Christianity--the story of Lucifer’s equivalent in Sufism is fascinating) and modern human plights, especially marginalized, ostracized, traumatized/abused/othered people. Y’know, the sort of people who would completely understand and might even support a figure who challenged the highest authority possible and lived to tell the tale. In similar ways as how villains can connect to those people and be appreciated as a sort of power fantasy, Lucifer can very easily be used in such a way too, but when he’s a power fantasy for straight white dudes he’s just... insultingly disappointing.

IMO, any story about modern day Lucifer that doesn’t include such themes in the work is a missed opportunity. It doesn’t even have to be hamfisted or overt about it--it can be as simple as the sort of people he spends time with, the ones that engage his attention. The audience can draw that parallel for themselves, maybe helped along here and there by particular moments of heartfelt honesty.

Like... little though I’d like to credit SPN with much, its portrayal of Lucifer is probably one of my favorites of all time. Half of that is Mark’s performance, yes, but Lucifer as a character was as meaningful and impressive to me as Robert de Niro as the dubious Lucifer figure in Angel Heart. Intelligent, eloquent men who have their own darkness and strangeness about them, but who approach the world around them without like... needlessly snarky chips on their shoulders. They aren’t like the standard white dude smelling his own farts because of how smart he thinks he is. They’re smart, they’re clever, they have a unique worldview and conviction that they hold to, and (in the case of SPN!Lucifer) there’s a lot of pain and rejection at the root of it. It’s not just some kind of selfish ambivalence to the world or not wanting to engage with emotion at all--SPN!Lucifer’s almost alarmingly expressive, IMO. And the way he picks his silver medal vessel is just!!! That shit will haunt me for the rest of my life! That shit was powerful!

Pride as Lucifer’s character flaw can be portrayed in different ways if the writers are actually decent at their jobs, and IMO one of the most promising ways to approach this is to show pride as a sort of ruthlessly focused confidence and dedication to conviction. Why should he rethink anything he feels or has done when he knows and feels it to have been the best possible decision in those situations? He’s a rational creature, yes, but too much rationality can lead itself to pride. To paraphrase The Dresden Dolls, all his ambition could leave him deaf with perfect vision. Learning to temper rationality with something else--compassion, perhaps?--would make for such a far more satisfying character growth for a modern day Lucifer, but I don’t see many (most?) fiction that has him as a character even try this. It’s staggering. It’s baffling. It makes me want to write it myself.

This post brought to you by my recent complaints to @idreamtofmanderleyagain, who is very free and welcome to chime in her thoughts on this subject if she likes or has the time ♥

[girl4music]

Recapping of my Rethinking series that talks about a specific worldview called ‘nonduality‘.

Recapping on the thoughts and feelings that went into my writings of the Rethinking series I’ve been posting on Tumblr lately, as they all tie in together because they’re all connecting the dots of a theory of everything that I really want people to understand because it may just be RIGHT and it would fix a lot that is WRONG if it is.

The ‘Hard Problem’ and ‘Easy Problem’ of consciousness as David Chalmers puts it. Easy is being what is it and where is it. Hard is why it exists at all. I personally take the virtual reality/simulation worldview and theory, but in the way the Ancient estorical civilizations and Eastern religions thought about it, which is nonduality. So to me it’s undoubtedly obvious what consciousness is and where consciousness is and that is what I’d like to explain the most as all problems come under this one, and consciousness is what science and philosophy avoid the most because they don’t understand it at all.

Consciousness is both the inner and outer experience of existence. Meaning it’s both material and energy. Not always in material form, and never just in energetic essence either as mass converts to energy and energy converts to mass in a constant cycle. If you take “time” out of the picture it’s much easier to understand how it can be both at the same time and all at once, but still not so easy to explain as others will still keep “time” in the picture.

As for where consciousness is, I’d say everywhere and nowhere at the same time: as in nonlocal. It has no place to be because it’s all places at once. This can only be understood if “space” is taken out of the picture, as empty space is still dimensions. There’s still width, height and backwards and forwards involved, and that’s also making it hard to explain and understand. We keep thinking there’s more dimensions to it, when there is actually none. 0. Because you can’t have a dimension for a ‘nothing’, but you also can’t have no dimensions for an ‘everything’. You got to have at least one for there to be a something at all with which to have a distinction of a ‘nothing’ and an ‘everything’ with. 1. So it’s 0 and 1 at the same “time” and in all “space”.

The ‘why is it’, is much less obvious and a lot harder to explain and understand but, “I think, therefore I am” is good enough for me for now. You see, if there is both ‘everything’ and “nothing” it’s a “herenow”. What makes it extremely difficult to see this is we’re trying to explain both these concepts by using a “something“. That’s how it gets difficult and confusing to try to explain it and why it goes horribly wrong in trying to understand it. Because you can’t explain or understand it at all unless you make sense of the nonsense. That is you must at least entertain the thought that The Big Bang and Doomsday are both happening right NOW. Therefore, the truth is that ‘The Universe’ is banging itself constantly in a transactional causality feedback loop created and determined by ‘The Mind’. That is to say that creation and destruction is happening all at once. In the moment of now as there is no “time” involved. Which then means that it has happened, is happening and will happen all at the same “time”. So then you could say that consciousness exists because it is God. The ultimate self-aware existence that creates other self-aware existences. God is constantly creating and determining God.

That for me is an extremely plausible theory given what we know about BOTH general relativity AND quantum physics which we know make NO SENSE together because they contradict each other by the barriers of language. So you must make sense of the nonesense to work with this theory. To do that, not just ‘time’, ‘space’ and ‘matter’ have to be taken out of the picture, but so too must ‘language’ because that’s how it’s completely confusing and why it goes horribly wrong. But nonduality is good enough for me. For my own existence of consciousness if not anyone elses. There are other worldviews and theories, of course, but none will be better for me than nonduality. Then the very simple thought that All IS GOD, GOD IS ALL, or put even simpler than that: “I Am”.

So to science and philosophy, isn’t that a good enough Unified Field Theory? Isn’t that a reasonable and plausible Theory Of Everything to have if you take out what we currently know and understand of existence? If you take Classical physics away from the picture, because we know it’s completely inaccurate. I’d say it is. But then again, I’m just one.

Rethinking series: I may do one for ‘time’, ‘space’ and ‘matter’ if I can find a way to explain it without sounding crazy because in this specific worldview theory, absolutely none of them exist, and it’s really difficult to explain and understand because of this. But I think it may be needed because the Westernized world as a majority cannot make sense of a nondual existence at all. But if it does turn out to be true about the way ‘The Universe’ and ‘The Mind’ work, we need to find a way to educate it so it will make sense to everyone because I don’t think people will just stop what they’re doing in reality to think about it and take it seriously without understanding as to why they should. So this is what I’ve got so far in explaining this unique perspective of the nature of the entirety of existence itself. This for me is the best way to get to the route of consciousness. Of what I believe to be GOD.

Language: https://girl4music.tumblr.com/post/171705619120/rethinking-language-what-is-your-definition-of

Consciousness - https://girl4music.tumblr.com/post/171697301775/rethinking-consciousness-there-are-many-different

Dimensionality - https://girl4music.tumblr.com/post/171687300295/rethinking-dimensionality-this-ones-for-the

Psychic ability - https://girl4music.tumblr.com/post/171622552235/rethinking-psychic-ability

God - https://girl4music.tumblr.com/post/171409317260/rethinking-god-stop-discluding-and-seperating

Reality - https://girl4music.tumblr.com/post/171409314510/rethinking-reality-what-is-the-next-state-in-our

Music - https://girl4music.tumblr.com/post/170456665525/rethinking-music-we-hear-and-feel-something-from

Mental illness - https://girl4music.tumblr.com/post/171381907810/rethinking-mental-illness-a-lesson-in-the-power

The Mind - https://girl4music.tumblr.com/post/171523045050/rethinking-the-mind-how-consciousness-creates

[fullofleaves]

Hi! I've been a huge fan of your work for years now. :) I think you're one of the authors who understand the depth and complexity of Loki's character the most, and you have such an amazing way of portraying both his strong and vulnerable aspects in your stories. I was just wondering if you've seen Ragnarok and if you have some time, would you be willing to share with us your honest thoughts about it? (Particularly about Loki's character development from the first two Thor films to this one?)

Yoooo sorry for taking forever to answer this, but the true fact is I had to go see Ragarok again to formulate a proper answer.  But, wow, thank you so much!  I really love Loki’s character, and spend probably Way Too Much Time thinking about him, so this is a great question.

Anyway.  HAVE I SEEN RAGNAROK.  Short answer: YES.  Longer answer: YES I HAVE SEEN IT THREE TIMES NOW AND NEED TO GO AGAIN AT SOME POINT.  It’s a very important movie to me, given my love of A) Loki, B) Loki being stuck in absolutely stupid situations, and C) Thor throwing stuff at Loki’s head.  That said, it had a couple details didn’t love so much, but overall it was exactly the kind of shit I’m in to.  I mean like… you’ve read the crap I write so you could have probably guessed that already.  I live for Loki’s suspicious relationship with the Grandmaster and the orgy ship and everyone saying the word anus a few too many times and Bruce complaining about Tony’s tight pants.  And the play.  Sweet Jesus, the play.  A+ material.  A+.

But Loki’s character.  There’s so much that could be said here, and I’ve seen a lot of really good meta floating around already, so I’m going to stick to a couple key points.

I really like this version of Loki?  And I think it’s a good direction for his character to go.  In the first Thor movie you had him starting off as a mischievous character but not really “evil”, until everything in his world went to hell and he kind of lost his shit.  In Avengers, well, he’s Full Evil, killing people for funzies and generally fucking everything up.  In Dark world, I don’t think he actually repented at all sitting locked away in prison… until Frigga’s death.  This is the first time his actions have had a real consequence for him, and you can see the change it makes when he fights alongside Thor.  And now here I feel like he has, in some ways, almost come back to who he was in the beginning.

He’s not Evil.  He didn’t kill Odin when he easily could have.  As “Odin”, he didn’t kill Thor or have him banished or send him off on a death sentence of a quest, or even try to do anything like that.  It’s implied he just kept encouraging Thor to stay away from Asgard, giving him space to build ridiculous statues of himself and commission bad theater.  He’s Loki of Asgard again, but like… a more confident, evolved version.  He’s been through actual hell with the Chitauri, did the whole supervillain thing, and now he’s just hanging around pulling the greatest con Asgard has ever seen by pretending to be king.  He didn’t even kill Heimdall, who probably saw right through his illusion.  Just discredited him and sent him on his way.  The point is: no more killing (at least of anybody more important than a random alien lackey or undead soldier) and his leadership of Asgard is more IDGAF than villainous.  Like if anybody noticed anything weird, they probably attributed it to Odin going off the deep end after Frigga’s death, not “we’re obviously being conned by an evil mastermind”.

Side note: this whole Odin charade would have been going on for several years by the time Thor finally outed him.  I think it’s possible that by this time, on some level, he was almost relieved to be caught.  It looks like he’d been pushing things further and further to see how much dumb shit he could get away with, tempting fate.  He doesn’t seem that upset at the big reveal, so obviously kingship of Asgard wasn’t a critical position for him.  He was just doing it for the lulz and basking in his own successful scheme.

And then they go to Earth to pick up Odin, and I think this is really Loki’s first wake-up call in the movie.  He had to have been expecting either Odin to still be under his enchantment (and Thor will kick his ass), or for Odin to retaliate in some way (as Odin is famous for doing).  In either case, he would have been mentally preparing himself for a confrontation.  That doesn’t happen.  Odin accepts and forgives him, which throws his whole balance completely off.  Is he reassessing all of his life choices that led up to this moment and rethinking his entire worldview?  Probably not.  But he has to, at the very least, feel kind of shitty.  You can see that in how he stays absolutely silent throughout the entire scene.  Not even a single word of argument or a weak attempt to explain himself. It’s Loki’s special brand of remorse.  You know: the kind where you don’t have to apologize (and probably get mad when somebody tries to talk to you about it.)

Now for the next wake-up call, let’s consider that Loki landed on Sakaar weeks before Thor did.  And because he was kicked out of the Bifrost beam first, he had no idea how the fight between Thor and Hela ended.  Did Thor win?  Who knows?  From his vantage point, it looked like Hela was pretty savage and had a good chance at coming out ahead.  He had to consider the very real possibility that Thor was dead or otherwise out of the way.  And you’d think that somebody who professed to have such a desire to sit on the throne would do anything to find his way back to Asgard to see WTF was going on, but… he didn’t.  He stayed where he landed. I’m still trying to figure out his motivation behind this choice.  Waiting for the right opportunity?  Maybe.  But if he’d already stolen the security codes, what was stopping him from leaving?  I think it’s more likely that he’d given up (at least for the time being) and decided this was is life now.  It was his fault Odin died and Hela was released.  His fault Thor could very well be dead and Asgard destroyed.  Add Frigga’s death on top of that and I’m thinking he’s decided at this point that Asgard is better off without him.  

And you can see this in the infamous elevator scene.  Loki mentions wanting to stay on Sakaar, in what’s pretty obviously a setup for Thor to say “oh no brother you are way too important to me, we must stay together”.  And then he’d grudgingly agree.  Instead, Thor’s like “YEP, THIS HELLHOLE SURE IS PERFECT FOR A SACK OF DICKS LIKE YOU, LMAO.”  He asks if Thor really thinks so little of him, when he has to think so little of himself.  It’s kind of a crushing blow to hear that Thor agrees.

My opinion?  Loki wouldn’t have tried to betray Thor in the following scene if Thor had given him the answer and brotherly love he was looking for.  Like, he would’ve betrayed Thor eventually, because that’s what he does, but it’d probably be more like “Hey Thor now that we’ve saved Asgard, how about you go off and restore peace to the realms while I stay behind and definitely do nothing to undermine your authority and usurp power again”.  He knows Thor’s the only one who has a chance at defeating Hela, so it’s in his best interest to stay on that side of the equation.  It’s only when Thor turns him down that his Lokiness gets the better of him and decides to turn Thor in for the bounty and go his own way.

So why does he go back to Asgard?  Spite, probably.  I don’t think he ever specifically wants to be GOOD, per se.  He’ll always have a massive chip on his shoulder that’s giving him an excuse to be a stupid shit and ruin stuff for everyone, especially himself.  But I do think, at certain points, he has wanted to ACT good.  He wants to step up and do what’s right, either to prove something to himself (ie, killing Laufey) or to prove something to Thor (ie, showing up out of the mist with a giant spaceship to save the day).  That struck me as a real “you betrayed me but now I’m helping you, don’t you feel bad?” move.

Okay.  So.  Where does Loki’s character end up after all this?  Well there’s this really great post I’ve seen going around about how the existence of Hela helps him realize that, shit, maybe he’s not a Bad Guy.  Because if Odin’s own blood daughter can turn out that spectacularly fucked up, his own problems and hangups and crimes seem kind of paltry in comparison.  And I agree with this 100%.  Compared to Hela, he’s small potatoes.  Hela is now officially the Worst Child Ever and this has to make him feel better about himself.  It has to.  Before, Thor would probably complain to his friends about how terrible Loki was (in fact, he does just this when telling the snake story), but now?  Now Thor can complain to Loki about how terrible Hela is.  And Loki can be like, “Wow, yeah, she’s just off the fucking charts with Evilness.”  And then they bond with a fistbump, or whatever.

ANYWAY, the point of all this is…?  Loki goes through a lot in this movie, but I think he ends up in the right place.  I mean, obviously not geographically, because they’re about to be screwed up the ass by Thanos (I assume).  But he’s had a four-movie arc now, bouncing all over the place in terms of motivation and emotion, and it seems like he’s kind of… settled now?  He’s back where he started, at Thor’s side, but after all he’s been through I think he now has a better handle on what he wants for himself and where he thinks he belongs, as opposed to what others tell him he wants and where they say he belongs.  Maybe it’s just me wanting to see what I want to see, but he comes across as a character who’s more comfortable with himself.  Especially compared to the Loki who was lashing out so much in earlier movies.  He’s had his rebellious phase.  Now it’s time to start over rebuilding his relationship with his brother.

[warninggraphiccontent]

13 March 2020

Viral content

There's a definite theme to a lot of the links this week, unsurprisingly. I've also been keeping track of various useful pieces of advice from people used to remote working as coronavirus fundamentally changes how we work and live, whether in the short term or more profoundly - more on that next week.

But for now, here's an extremely useful tech handbook started by the team at Newspeak House, which has resources on everything from health advice and data about the disease, to advice on working remotely and tackling misinformation.

In other news:

We're doing a very quick project for Nesta on missing data in preventive services - looking specifically at children's centres and youth services. Here's the write-up of a workshop we did - thoughts very welcome.

My colleague Nick celebrated three years at the IfG with a terrible chart. Hilarity ensued.

I was very sad to see that Clare Moriarty, one of the most inspirational senior civil servants to those of us working around data and openness in government, is leaving the civil service. This speech of hers from last year is well worth a read.

I'd forgotten just how good the FT's 404 page is.

Delighted to hear the good people at Citizens Advice are finding inspiration in our dataviz. You may be less delighted by the puns that followed.

And a reminder that we're hiring someone to run Whitehall Monitor. A big thank you to Jukesie for including it in his indispensable jobs newsletter.

Have a good weekend

Gavin

Today's links:

Graphic content

Viral chart

A very short thread on the power of data graphics and scientific communication (Carl T. Bergstrom)

Spot the difference... (Rosamund Pearce)

Everyone's job is to help FLATTEN THE CURVE (Dr Siouxsie Wiles)

Coronavirus: How peak of cases could be cut by 'social distancing' (Sky News)

How canceled events and self-quarantines save lives, in one chart (Vox)

It’s not exponential: An economist’s view of the epidemiological curve (voxeu.org)

Viral content

17 responsible live visualizations about the coronavirus, for you to use (Datawrapper)

Illustrative simulations of a transmission model of COVID-19 (The Lancet)

COMMUNICATION THEMES FROM CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK (Visualising Data)

COVID-19: Research in Uncertain Times (Ipsos MORI)

In America, even pandemics are political* (The Economist)

Foot traffic has fallen sharply in cities with big coronavirus outbreaks* (The Economist)

Die Schweiz liegt auf Platz 6 der am stärksten betroffenen Länder – alles zum Coronavirus in 14 Grafiken (NZZ)

9 charts that explain the coronavirus pandemic (Vox)

Right or wrong, there’s no doubt the UK is increasingly an outlier in our Covid response (BBC Newsnight)

Soap is such an ordinary thing. Can it really kill a virus? (YES! Now wash your hands) (Prof Lucy Rogers)

From coronavirus to bushfires, misleading maps are distorting reality (First Draft news, via in other news)

Coronavirus: UK maps and charts (BBC News)

How Coronavirus Hijacks Your Cells* (New York Times)

How Deadly Is Coronavirus? What We Know and What We Don’t* (The Upshot)

Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) (Our World in Data)

Total UK cases COVID-19 Cases Update (Public Health England)

Coronavirus Data Pack (Information is Beautiful)

Wie das Coronavirus nach Deutschland kam (Zeit Online)

COVID-19 MAP (/r/CovidMapping, via Pritesh)

How the World’s Largest Coronavirus Outbreaks Are Growing* (New York Times)

Exponential growth and epidemics (3Blue1Brown)

I’m no epidemiologist, but I am a #dataviz specialist, so here are some thoughts on coronavirus and log scales (John Burn-Murdoch, via Marcus)

When Everyone Stays Home: Empty Public Spaces During Coronavirus (The Atlantic, via Benoit)

#IWD2020

International Women’s Day 2020: Close to three in ten men say sexual jokes or stories at work are acceptable (Ipsos MORI)

Americans overestimate voters’ prejudices against women and ethnic minorities* (The Economist)

What do we know about gender inequality in the UK? (ONS)

Cabinet and civil service gender balance (Ketaki and me for IfG)

Seven in ten support equal coverage for women’s sport, but not at the cost of men’s coverage (YouGov)

A dozen+ visionary pioneers who did great (and good) things with data visualization (RJ Andrews)

Would making salaries public help end disparities?* (FT)

#Budget2020

The budget in charts - Tom, Graham (IfG)

Spring Budget 2020: IFS analysis (IFS)

The Stupidest Budget of All Time* (Tortoise)

Spring Budget 2020 response (Resolution Foundation)

Life and death

Why we run (Strava)

Diabetes risk: what’s driving the global rise in obesity rates?* (FT)

How Working-Class Life Is Killing Americans, in Charts* (New York Times)

Middle-aged generation most likely to die by suicide and drug poisoning (ONS, from 2019)

Changing trends in mortality by leading causes of death, England and Wales: 2001 to 2018 (ONS)

Mortality and life expectancy trends in the UK (The Health Foundation)

Everything else

Political trust (Will Jennings via Alex)

British Election Study 2019 Data Release – Internet Panel, Results File, and Expert Survey

Ministers (me for IfG)

Political protests have become more widespread and more frequent* (The Economist)

Getting moving: Where will transport infrastructure investment unlock city-centre growth? (Centre for Cities)

45 Minute Cities (Alasdair Rae)

National Primary Results Map: Where Biden and Sanders Have Won* (New York Times)

Joe Biden’s surge poses threat to Bernie Sanders’ US primary hopes* (FT)

Meta data

Viral content

Five ways coronavirus could shape our digital future (Jonathan Tanner for the Overseas Development Institute)

Coronavirus divides tech workers into the 'worthy' and 'unworthy' sick (The Guardian)

Coronavirus: A Digital Governance Emergency of International Concern (CIGI)

Fact Check Explorer: Coronavirus (Google)

NHS announces plan to combat coronavirus fake news (The Guardian)

Facts on Coronavirus (Full Fact)

Sifting Through the Coronavirus Outbreak (Mike Caulfield)

The Simplest Way to Spot Coronavirus Misinformation on Social Media (OneZero)

CORONAVIRUS and HAKKAR THE SOULFLAYER'S CORRUPTED BLOOD! Or what do people actually do in a pandemic? (Alex Krasodmoski)

On TikTok, coronavirus is just another way to gain clout* (New Statesman)

Chinese social media sites blocked medical information about the coronavirus, research indicates (Poynter)

Boris Johnson Has Summoned Major Tech Companies To Downing Street To Help In The Fight Against The Coronavirus (BuzzFeed)

Inside Dominic Cummings’s coronavirus meeting with big tech* (Wired)

How a global health crisis turns into a state-run surveillance opportunity (The Observer)

CIO interview: Sarah Wilkinson, NHS Digital (Computer Weekly)

#OpenDataDay

Celebrating the tenth Open Data Day on Saturday 7th March 2020 (Open Knowledge)

Celebrating Open Data Day around the world (Open Knowledge)

What is ‘open data’ and why should we care? (ODI)

What @instituteforgov is able to do with #opendata (IfG)

#opendataday, #ODD2020, #OpenDataDay2020

#Budget2020

Me

Peter Wells

Owen Boswarva

What Works Centres

Digital markets taskforce: terms of reference (BEIS/DCMS/CMA)

If we want cutting-edge R&D, we must rethink our attitude to failure (Hetan Shah in City AM)

#IWD2020

In a world biased against women, what role do algorithms play? (CDEI)

Mapping Gender Data Gaps: An SDG Era Update (Data2X)

Why cars are unsafe for women* (Caroline Criado Perez for the Sunday Times)

Why the web needs to work for women and girls (Sir Tim Berners-Lee)

International Women’s Day: celebrating the black women tackling bias in AI (Ada Lovelace Institute)

UK government

The UK’s national data strategy is still missing in action (New Statesman)

Does Brexit Britain have a data strategy fit for purpose? - the public sector perspective (diginomica)

Price and prejudice: automated decision-making and the UK government (podcast) (openDemocracy)

The UK Has Slumped in Open Data Rankings: This Should Trouble All of US (Jeni Tennison in Computer Business Review)

MANUFACTURING THE FUTURE: COULD HEALTHCARE DATA HELP REBALANCE THE UK’S ECONOMY? (Reform)

Designing an Information Governance approach for London (LOTI)

Case for helping join up government services (GDS)

MPs told to hold to account those responsible for Post Office Horizon IT scandal (Computer Weekly)

UK.gov is not sharing Brits' medical data among different agencies... but it's having a jolly good think about it (The Register)

The UK’s tech sector has much to be optimistic about (Matt Warman MP for CapX)

I’ve written a bot @UKreleases that tweets out all the transparency releases governments departments post on http://gov.uk (Jon Stone)

At least 20,000 people denied information that could prove right to live in UK (The Independent)

DCMS to examine government data-sharing barriers ahead of programme of ‘radical and transformative change’ (Public Technology, via Colm)

We’re hosting a community meet-up to discuss how we archive data (Technology in Government)

Harnessing the potential of linked administrative data for the justice system (ADR UK)

AI, IoT, tech, etc

AI needs more regulation, not less (Brookings)

AI In Policing: Better Than A Knife Through The Chest? (Forbes)

Better intelligence about artificial intelligence (Nesta)

Reset (Luminate)

IoT Week[note 32] (LOTI)

Everything else

David Hand on Dark Data (Princeton University Press)

We Built a Database of Over 500 iPhones Cops Have Tried to Unlock (Motherboard)

The Robots Are Coming: Ethics, Politics, and Society in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (Kenneth A. Taylor, Boston Review)

How our network is considering data ethics: survey results (ODI)

Researcher danah boyd on how to protect the census and fix tech (Protocol)

How close is humanity to destroying itself?* (The Spectator)

Stealth political ads flourish on Facebook* (Politico)

#NICAR, #NICAR2020

William Gibson on the apocalypse: “it’s been happening for at least 100 years”* (New Statesman)

A Dataset is a Worldview (Hannah Davis)

Centre Write: Digital disruption? (Bright Blue)

Facebook sued by Australian information watchdog over Cambridge Analytica-linked data breach (The Guardian)

Frontex hits activist pair with €24,000 legal bill (EUobserver, via Giuseppe)

A catalogue of things that are stopping change: part II (Rose Mortada and James Reeve)

Opportunities

JOB: Senior Researcher - Whitehall Monitor (IfG)

JOB: Data Journalist / Research Analyst (Spend Network)

JOB: Team Lead - Data Technology (Data Unit) (DfT)

JOB: Policy Fellow (Digital Technology) (The King's Fund)

JOB: Data Science Campus Delivery Manager (ONS)

JOB: Social Media and Engagement Journalist (FT)

JOB: Partnerships and Community Manager (Understanding Patient Data)

JOB: Head of Public Policy (ODI)

JOBS: Good Things Foundation

EVENT: Digital Insight and Business Intelligence in Local Gov 2020 (London Borough of Redbridge and techUK, via Martin)

And finally...

Love in the time of quarantine

I made a graph of old relationships... (Jeremiah Lowin)

BETWEEN THE SPREADSHEETS (1843, via Alice)

I Work from Home (The New Yorker, via David)

Pi Day tomorrow

How a farm boy from Wales gave the world pi (The Conversation)

Even After 31 Trillion Digits, We’re Still No Closer To The End Of Pi (FiveThirtyEight)

Pi Day: How One Irrational Number Made Us Modern* (New York Times)

A colorful π chart (Datawrapper)

Everything else

What's your beverage of choice? (Jess Walker)

Cognition (Steve Stewart-Williams)

This is the scale of the universe (How Things Work)

[howyoutalktostrangers]

So,

A novel structured like a cross-section of a tree stump.

That was the premise Mike Christie described to me a few years ago, during his book tour through the Kootenays for If I Fall, If I Die. I was writing a story about him for the Nelson Star and we drove through Blewett on a snowy Sunday morning as he described to me how his new book would have multiple layers, like the rings on a tree. 

I couldn’t picture how that worked.

“Honestly, though, I don’t want you to tell anyone about this until the book comes out. It’s one of those ideas that just feels so good, I think I’m a little paranoid somebody’s going to steal it,” he said.

Well, the wait is over. On Tuesday night Mike launched his latest novel Greenwood at Munro’s, and I’ve already started greedily consuming the text. His collection of short stories The Beggar’s Garden is one of my favourite books of all time (particularly the story “Goodbye Porkpie Hat”) and I can tell just from the first few pages it’s going to have that same rich language, the same slightly subversive worldview.

And right there, a couple of pages in, is a diagram of how the story works. Starting at the newest part of the tree, the bark, the narrative follows the characters’ family tree backwards in time to its days as a seedling at the centre of the stump. Then it runs back into the future, checking in with each generation of the Greenwood family as it goes.

Now I understand his paranoia. 

During the launch Christie told everyone that he was partially inspired by David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, which also takes readers into the far past and the post-apocalyptic future simultaneously. In Greenwood, Christie works his way from an inciting train crash with two mysterious survivors to a Dust Bowl era story reminiscent of Steinbeck and all the way to a future in which most of Earth’s trees are dying in an event called The Withering. 

“The book points towards the fact that the Dust Bowl was the first environmental disaster, and it’s actually quite similar to the Great Withering. It was a time when humanity lost control of the climate, and that created climate refugees,” Christie told the crowd at Munro’s.

“I found an interesting resonance there between the poor and disenfranchised of the past and then the people existing in the climate crisis we’re just beginning now … A lot of people are looking back and seeing hope in the past, because that was a time when people came together to act collectively and solve problems.”

After a short reading, fellow author and UVic professor Lee Henderson hosted a light-hearted conversation about the text. He was effusive about Christie’s central character Everett, calling him “beautifully and richly depicted, such a likable but rascally protagonist”. 

That was something Christie had fun with.

“The Great Depression is something I’ve always been interested in. I love the films and books from that time, I love Steinbeck. But there was a point where I handed in a draft to my agent, who is a great editor and an author himself, and he said ‘you have to turn down the old-timeyness by about 30 per cent,” he said.

“I was getting into the slang of the era and the cars, all the period details, which is fun as a writer but you have to strike a balance. Being a writer really is about finding that perfect balance between too much and too little.”

But really, the main topic of the book is trees. Living on Galiano Island (he admitted Greenwood is a slightly fictionalized version of it) he was constantly surrounded by inspiration. He began researching everything he could find on the topic, from how they communicate to how long they live. And now that the book is out there, he’s become something of a real life tree advocate. Earlier this year he wrote an op-ed calling for a tree-planting program in Canada. A few hours after it was published, Justin Trudeau announced an ambitious tree-planting plan as part of his election platform. 

“I was like “can I take credit for that?’ But there was no way, really.”

One of his main goals in writing Greenwood was to inspire wonder, encouraging readers to rethink their relationship with the trees they’re surrounded by everyday.

“Part of the purpose of this book is to sensitize the reader to the great wonder and complexity of trees. They’re something we’ve taken for granted for a long time, and now we’re realizing that they’re not just a life support system for the whole Earth. They also make us feel good and they’re kind of thinking. It’s incredible,” he said. 

He described how trees can communicate via subterranean fungal networks, warning about pests or dangers. He believes we’re just scratching the surface of understanding what type of consciousness trees have, and all the different ways they communicate. This is just one of the reasons he believes they need to be valued and protected, before it’s too late. In learning about trees he’d also learned a lot about the climate crisis that’s menacing them. He believes it’s worse than most people are willing to realize.

“So are we doomed?” Henderson asked. 

Christie smiled, took a moment to think of what to say. “That’s a tough one to answer, but I do believe we’ve come together in big ways before. And though our quality of life may change and the amount we can consume might go down, I have faith in the resourcefulness of people,” he said.

“I believe in our ability to come together and find solutions when faced with really dire problems.”

The Literary Goon

[char27martin]

Pacing Your Plot: 20 Ways to Rethink Your Narrative Pace

[Don’t miss your chance to enter the Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition! Impress us with your best story in 1500 words or fewer. Deadline Dec. 15.]

Illustration from “The tale of Peter Rabbit” by Beatrix Potter. | Image Source

By Jodell Sadler, founder of KidLitCollege.org Editorial Agent, Jill Corcoran Literary Agency, JCLA

This year, when the bells toll that shift to a new year, the study I’ve been exploring hits its tenth year. It will be ten years of studying the craft of PACING. Ten whole years. It’s not a little thing. It’s been a constant rethinking and challenging what works to stop, speed, slow, pause, or halt or flip to art within a narrative. For me, it’s the careful unfolding of story that thinks as much about what appears on the page as youdo what does not. It’s about honing the negative space of good writing. From 2007 to today, the trifecta of good pacing, the 10 P’s, and 20 tools and 10 key considerations editors and agents need in order to take on a piece of writing. This study includes over 200 moves a writer may use to enahance your narrrative pacing: using the trifecta to connect to readers, supporting the story’s theme, enhancing emotional resonance, improving your effeciveness on a word-level, adding tension, suspense, and unexpected surprise—and so much more.

Pacing Your Plot: 200 Techniques & Insider Advice for Pacing Your Fiction, forthcoming from Writer’s Digest Books (2018-9), will serve up a true insider view on pacing and its importance to the writing craft.

20 Ways to Rethink Your Narrative Pace

Pacing is action, movement, energy—and making the stars align in your writing.

It means paying attention to how you pause, speed, slow, and halt story as you unfold your plot in order to enhance the emotional arc.

Pacing is pause and cradling your reader in a clause, at times and considering all the benefits of diction, tone, and prosody as a means to so a more.

Pacing moves beyond that converstation of long and short sentences to consider syllables, syntax, sentence structure and all the poetic devices we can employ at any time within our narratives.

It’s about challenging each word and activating verbs, ousting adverbs, and infusing your story with specificity while keeping your direction and controlling and knowing the whys behind your editing decisions.

Pacing helps your connect to plot in a way that emotes the meaning and adds depth to your story, scenes, and characters.

It’s about “authenticity” and staying true to your narrative worldbuilding and really focusing in on interiority of your characters.

It’s about comedic pause, breath, and white space and what we call texture and a whole lot of voice because diction matters.

Pacing explores sharing that joke or conversation in an opening that flips and gets re-cast at the end in a way the reader needs no insight in order to appreciate it fully— because now they know these characters well and feel like family.

It’s about identifying key tools that allow you more control over the moments of your story—like seeing the use of a list as a pacing tool and understanding why it works and why parenthetical asides will add to it’s effectiveness.

Pacing reaches ever forward, and inward, adding interiority, to the spirit of your main character, celebrating his or her worldview, and about imaginings and creativityand play—that sense of letting go.

Pacing invites writers to get out of their own way and do more—dare more—and perform better.

It’s that ever upward, getting-ever-closer, of good writing that taps into what a story demands.

Pacing is that subtle shifts not-so-sure-what-to-edit moments into allowing your own playful engagement to craft because you have an insider view on why you are making certain moves.

It’s seeing more possibilities in every move on a word level, adding rhythm and repetition at key times, and really bringing more joy to our process.

Pacing beckons magic and remains the best part of writing—the icing on our proverbial publication pie. It’s truly delicious.

Pacing offers the potential to impact your work in the best, most postive way you can imagine.

When we pace, we incorporated tools, challenges and play with words.

It’s about really see pacing as that performance quality we bringto the page of good writing when really mess with your readers’ and present them with an unforgettable experience.

Pacing improve scenes and moments—halts or shifts them to allow the art and visual imagery—to rise off the page; it’s that interplay of art and words.

I’ve taken my pacing material into conferences and writing events and writer’s workshops at schools and presented as an agent, secondary educator, and professor. I’ve taken my pacing study through so many different scenerios. Tested it. Challenged it. K12 writer’s workshops, high school advanced placement, dual credit courses, collegiate open campus, first-year students on up to graduate-level learners and professional writers and writer-illustrators with unbelieveable results.

I’ve shared my pacing study as I launched KidLit College, which became my way of sharing craft and paying it forward to editors and agents while helping writers and illustrators make the connections needed to publish strong, so I know this material will rock your edits. It will rock it off the charts.

Today, in honor of my ten years of studying pacing, I am offering mentorship for the first-place winners in our KidLit College Writing Contest 2017. We are on the search for well-paced manuscripts in many genre categories: fiction picture books, nonfiction picture books, chapter books, middle grades, graphic novels, young adult novels, and nonfiction proposals. Every entry receives the following: 1) Submission feedback, 2) A FREE pass to our first KidLit College webinar of 2018 ($30 value), and You can take 10% off until our Entry Deadline of December 31st at Midnight CST using the check out code: KLC-2017 (actually, you can use this code on everything on our website). First place winnners receive a free Crit-N-Chat (editor or agent chat of their choice: $125 value), Pace-Writing mentoring from me (a $1050 value), and submission to five publishers. To learn more, log in to KidLitCollege.org.

Writer’s Digest Digital Archive Collection: Iconic Women Writers

For nearly 100 years, Writer’s Digest magazine has been the leading authority for writers of all genres and career levels. And now, for the first time ever, we’ve digitized decades of issues from our prestigious archives to share with the world. In this, the first of our series of archive collections, discover exclusive historic interviews with classic women authors including Maya Angelou, Pearl S. Buck, Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates and Joan Didion—and much, much more. Featuring five stunning issues spanning more than 60 years, this collection is perfect for writers, literary enthusiasts, educators and historians. Explore what’s inside.

The post Pacing Your Plot: 20 Ways to Rethink Your Narrative Pace appeared first on WritersDigest.com.

from Writing Editor Blogs – WritersDigest.com http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/pacing-your-plot-20-ways-to-rethink-your-narrative-pace

[econesters-blog]

Update time!

So roughly three months in and here we are. Clearly I’ve abandoned regular updates. I need to get back to that, I really did enjoy it. (1) Once a month, I will read and read analysis on a text that will expand my worldview. This should mostly be texts that I disagree with from the off - ideas that will challenge me to wrestle with some of my strongly held convictions. (reporting on the last day of each month, new selection revealed on the first)

Nope. Perhaps a list of to read books would help with this?

(2) Once a week, I will finish a book - any book - and summarise my thoughts here. (summaries are due in on Thursdays) Nope. Finished a very small number.  BUT! I did make it through an impressive number of episodes of new podcasts. So I think I’ve done fine in terms of exposing myself to new things. (3) I will watch at least one new film a week and review it here. (reflections due in on Wednesdays) Actually probably did do this. Not the reviews but I bet I’ve made it through at least 12 new films.

(4) I will complete my one year bible study course. And will have read the entire text by the end of it. (Tuesdays while my partner is at her politicals meetings, I will have mine. Reflections during and after recorded here). Nope. Going to catch up though. I can do this.

(5) I will (along with my partner) save enough for a deposit on our first house. Come January 31st, 2018, we will be ready to buy. (Weekly updates on Fridays) We’re doing ok - Saving her salary every month for three months is already looking pretty nice in our account. (6) I will read the paper every day - at least one article, and comment on it here, staying up to date with current events. (Morning report along with tea) I have been doing this but not commenting here. So, somewhat accomplished. (7) I will propose to my girlfriend. (I’ll show you a picture) YES! And she said yes (not overly shocking but still very exciting.) (8) I will find a way to get us to the Fringe Festival. We’ve decided to go next summer. And to camp. God help us. (9) I will finish reading and annotating The Homebuilders Guide. That sits gathering dust...

(10)  I will find a way to pay for my education - masters minimum, PhD desired. I did but I don’t think I want to go. Getting a degree for the sake of it just isn’t what I want to be about. But there are too many other things to pay for at the moment. 

(11) I will choose, apply for, and be accepted to my masters programme. I did most of this. But see above because now I’m rethinking.

(12) I will remain a committed vegan. (pictures of our food journey to come!) Very very very much yes.

(13) I will spend 4/12 months sober. (February to start) I did all of Feb. And I’ve really cut back. (14) I will run a 10k. (Report post run - every run - of the journey) We hit 5k and faltered. I failed to report in but we were doing so well. Then Siobhan got sick and we lost our momentum.

(15) I will call, not message, my mother every Sunday (report due in after call) A+ for once a week calls.

(16) I will reach out to one friend a week that I haven’t spoken to in a while. Mondays I will report on who I am contacting and when each week. I’ve done ok with this. Not once a week but definitely reaching out pretty regularly. (17) I will finish 6 sewing projects this year (starting with my partner’s quilt by the end of March. Weekly progress reports on Saturdays) Yeah I really need to catch up on this.

(18) I will design my own programme for my own version of Forensics and get the guts to propose it. Nope. No movement on this.

(19) I will find a second job or a new job that gives me more of a sense of fulfilment. Saturdays I will report in on how I am going and what I have found/applied for. Have really been looking for this and I applied and interviewed for something recently but no dice. Birmingham Uni library and Liberal Arts departments don’t really seem to want me.

(20) I will complete this blog as a mindfulness practice on my own terms and no one else’s.