#soapboxes

[durenjtmusings]

Finally, the perfect response to a classic Ao3 debate - from Anne Brontë in 1848.

[ryn-city]

Upholding Luigi Mangione as a class hero isn't actually helping anything; not because killing the ceo was wrong (it wasn't) but because the man still maintains his innocence. You're doing no better than the cops and fraction of the public against the shooter's actions by treating Mangione as if he's unequivocally guilty.

Redirect your energy to fighting the police's bullshit prosecution and blatant public defamation of his image. Stop supporting him on the grounds of heroic actions. Support him on the grounds of there's still literally no proof he actually fucking did anything.

[grungekitty-77]

Not that anybody asked, but I think it's important to understand how shame and guilt actually work before you try to use it for good.

It's a necessary emotion. There are reasons we have it. It makes everything so. much. worse. when you use it wrong.

Shame and guilt are DE-motivators. They are meant to stop behavior, not promote it. You cannot, ever, in any meaningful way, guilt someone into doing good. You can only shame them into not doing bad.

Let's say you're a parent and your kid is having issues.

Swearing in class? Shame could work. You want them to stop it. Keep it in proportion*, and it might help. *(KEEP IT IN PROPORTION!!!)

Not doing their homework? NO! STOP! NO NOT DO THAT! EVER! EVER! EVER! You want them to start to do their homework. Shaming them will have to opposite effect! You have demotivated them! They will double down on NOT doing it. Not because they are being oppositional, but because that's what shame does!

You can't guilt people into building better habits, being more successful, or getting more involved. That requires encouragement. You need to motivate for that stuff!

If you want it in a simple phrase:

You can shame someone out of being a bad person, but you can't shame them into being a good person.

[featuresofinterest]

god i hope the cpsc takes the shot. i think this would dramatically change their entire business model. amazon makes so much money by selling defective or mislabeled or just plain dangerous products and then faces little liability because this stuff is actually being sold by random third-party sellers that don't get vetted at all and can be hard to prosecute because they're in china or wherever. this is a big part of what makes amazon so powerful and it would be good for everyone if they were forced to bear more responsibility for the damages caused by the crap available on their website

[soapkid]

non furries are so annoying about the semantics of calling something a furry. "erm wouldnt that be like.. a feathery???" its an avian and its still a furry. ok yes you can call the slug a slimy thats funny. but these are all fursonas. unless theyre not. i hope this hurts you

[aspharah]

hey bro can we like adopt paralleling themes and symbolize opposites but in a two sides of the same coin kind of way? it doesn’t have to be weird. wait what do you mean thats gay

[bluegiragi]

slash n' clash.

full version on patreon

[lazylittledragon]

y'know every time i feel guilty about bothering someone by singing along when i'm listening to music, i just remember that i have to tolerate my dirtbag brother screaming at his ps5 for hours every day so listening to muffled off-key fall out boy is probably preferable

[milfsisyphus]

EARNEST POSTING. while everyone is still working on new year’s resolutions i want to make sure everyone knows about the FREE serial reader app.

if you are trying to read more classics/public domain works but for whatever reason struggle with incorporating reading into your daily life, or you’re just intimidated by huge books, serial reader is a great tool to make reading more approachable. it works much like dracula daily in that it sends you one excerpt at a time (usually about 10-15 minutes of estimated reading time). awesome for commutes, lunch breaks, quick bedtime story, etc.

it’s very customizable. you can change fonts, themes, and you can even take notes and highlight. you can also sync with other reading apps like goodreads (no storygraph yet……. we can hope!). the base app is completely free, but there is a one-time optional upgrade fee of $2.99 USD if you want some extra features. this is all developed by one guy, so the money goes to supporting the creator - although i’m sure apple takes their cut 😑.

there are a ton of works to choose from, currently something like 800+.

you can now also add your own .epubs to break up your own books into daily serials! very cool, serial reader!

this was the best app i added last year so i just want to pass it on. happy reading! :)

[sixty-silver-wishes]

jonathan sims is a very talented voice actor but unfortunately I primarily associate him with when he was playing seward on re: dracula, and he had to begin like half his episodes with "warning: this episode contains medical ableism." my dad and I quote that around the house to this day. I'm sorry jonathan sims. I'm sure you're a great person. but you have become the medical ableism guy to me

[mathsbian]

Assuming makes an ass of you and me.

[sonarsunbeam]

fandomification and shipping is fucking up how some of yall consume media and i mean it

[chicagosavant]

yeah—I’m afraid Andor got the Firefly treatment. It was a little too close to the contemporary issues of our current social/political domestic and international fuse-boxes, and basically written-off after a 2nd season. The same with Whedon’s ‘Firefly’ series. Maybe ‘RebelMoon’ will deliver what ‘Ahsoka’ can’t—held back by equal parts, conventional/formulaic characterizations, faux-lines dropped into dialogue like info-dump exposition-bombs, wooden acting and ham-fisting foreshadowing to *build menace and tension*.

Let me compare the experience watching ‘Serenity’—a 2 hr movie of which I really knew nothing of the characters or the ‘verse from which they came before seeing it. After 2 hours, I couldn’t stop thinking about the movie for weeks—fell in love with the characters, their struggles, storylines, the larger entanglements and conflicts of the Firefky/Serenity ‘verse. Enough to watch the whole series, and wished (and wonder to this day) where they could have taken that series if they’d let it mature across more than 1 season. what I’m saying is—‘Ahsoka’ had 2 hrs to draw me in, into a ‘verse whose mythos ought to be like nitrogen enriched fertilizer to food crops. Only, what we get are weeds—prolific, low quality turn-around with a couple-few cameo nods, or EasterEggs, and everyone’s all Coocoo for cocoa puffs over derivative scripting, hack-assed production quality. Ahsoka, in 2 hrs, did nothing to make me care about this story, or the character arcs. Though I will admit, Baylin and Shin brought a refreshing verve to an otherwise ‘blah’ (better than ObiWan, and MsndalorianS3 thankfully) couple of into episodes. But it’s not ‘Andor’—and if your fucking multi-billion dollar corporation can produce shows with quality of Andor (almost matching ‘TheExpanse’ imho for the sheer breadth of emotional-draw and tension), and we—the viewers—are paying that service. Then I, as a Thrawn advocate, feels the character deserves the depth and angst of Andor, and not some fluffy, faux kid-animation brought to love-action. MouseEars should have just made a Rebels S5 sequel. by the by, I’ll also point out the old adage of trailer-previews as predictors of good or bad series. When the trailer has shown most of the highlights that were essentially revealed in these first 2 episodes, and there was really no other substantial release of fresh scenes with subsequent trailer peeks after the first BIG reveal in April, the Force prophecy goes that the producers know the show isn’t going to perform well. Bc the trailer basically gave away all the good plot points, and all the other episodes are mostly filler. Thrawn really deserved better…

teehee

[stormsthatrage]

It bugs me that so many people's default example of published fanfic is 50 Shades of Grey.

What about West Side Story, a famous modern AU of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet?

What about Dante's Inferno, a self-insert RPF if I've ever seen one?

What about Wicked, a pre-canon AU of The Wizard of Oz?

Hell, what about Percy Jackson? There's definitely an argument to be made that that's a modern AU of various Greek myths.

Humans have been writing fanfic as long as they have been telling stories. In about the year 20 BC, our dear Roman poet Ovid wrote the Heroides, a series of aggrieved "letters" from the female characters of famous myths to their respective male heroes. Are you telling me that Ovid, writing a letter from the perspective of Queen Dido to Aeneas -- Aeneas, whose fantastical adventures were put into poem by Virgil -- wasn't writing an outsider-POV fic? A fic that is, in fact, translated in Latin classes world-wide today!

There is so much famous fanfic out there, but people tend to forget that it is fanfic once it becomes mainstream enough. And as a consequence of that, people who aren't into fandom don't see how beautiful fanfic is, and some members of fandom feel shame associated with writing and reading fic. But fanfic is beautiful, and it is something humans have always done, and it is nothing to be ashamed about.

So if you ever find yourself in a situation to give an example of published fic, think outside the box. Remember that published fanfics hide in plain sight; once they're famous enough, we no longer think of them as fanfic. And never forget that fanfic is a very, very old human tradition, and your ancestors who partook in it would not have wanted you to feel ashamed of it.

[transhulklings]

Ever since my hand could make a fist, it gripped a blade

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