#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.

[murderballadeer]

i just think that smoking weed at concerts poll was rly annoying bc the question was "is it rude" but people were treating it like the only two options were "it's morally unconscionable in every situation and you deserve to go to jail if you do it even once" and "it's always ok everywhere and if you say it's not in the best of taste you're exactly the same as a fascist" and the whole thing made me feel like this

[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

[bluegiragi]

just for fun, i thought i'd redraw an old soapbox comic to see how much i've improved! you can read the original from 2 years ago here.

early access + nsfw on patreon soapbox masterpost (scroll to bottom)

[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

[seachick]

I am begging everyone who has ever bemoaned about Hollywood only making sequels and IP movies to go see Sinners in theaters. It has the creative team behind Black Panther working on it and their talent shines through in the cinematography, music, costuming, EVERYTHING. It's a completely original screenplay written by Ryan Coogler and if you want to support original movies, go see it in theaters.

[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! :)

[bestanimal]

So can we vote for Dire wolves now? (I know they are grey wolf based hybrids including jackle, red wolf, timber wolf, and artic fox dna arcoding to some sources idk how accurate that entire list is so please correct me) but still 😂

Nah, those aren’t Dire Wolves, sorry. 😅

What Colossal Biosciences did was examine some Dire Wolf (Aenocyon dirus) DNA and edited 14 genes of Gray Wolf (Canis lupus) DNA to match it. They even made sure to make the animals white, using a coat coloration gene expressed in Domestic Dogs, because they believe Dire Wolves would have been white (based on no published evidence; Dire Wolves were a temperate species and their coloration was more likely similar to jackals or Dholes).

DNA contains tens of thousands of genes. You can not make 20 changes in only 14 genes and have a whole other species, let alone a whole other genus.

Despite what the company is claiming, Gray Wolves are not the closest relatives of Dire Wolves, which we know from a (peer-reviewed) DNA study done in 2021. They are more close to jackals, African Wild Dogs, and Dholes than they are to wolves. Despite being around the same size, they do not share “99.5%” of the DNA of Gray Wolves; there are hundreds of thousands of genetic differences between the species.

What Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi are are three Gray Wolves that have been genetically modified to look like pop culture “Dire Wolves” from a TV Show. They do not contain any Dire Wolf DNA and they can not and will not fill the same niche that Dire Wolves did.

Apparently, Colossal is doing legit conservation work alongside their clickbait-y work, and they use the sensationalized concepts to get funding from rich idiots and celebrities. If they can get some Elon-Musk-awesomebro-type to fund their “Dire Wolf de-extinction”, they can use that money to clone critically endangered Red Wolves (Canis rufus) on the side.

Personally, I do not trust them. What they’re doing is shady and irresponsible, and even if it’s bringing in money for conservation it’s still misleading and misinforming the public about how DNA works and about how irreversible extinction actually is. It’s taking money that could be used to save the animals we still have, and instead using it to make a hairy Asian Elephant and claim that it’s a Mammoth.

[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

[murderballadeer]

tumblr user who doesn’t leave their suburban home: smoking weed within 50 miles of another human is evil and anyone who does it is a sinful degenerate who deserves to be thrown into a dungeon for the rest of their life

tumblr user who also doesn’t leave their suburban home but whose online persona involves posturing abt how cool and punk they are: unlike you virgin loser shut-ins i am a real leftist and i think it’s fine to blow weed smoke directly into an asthmatic toddler’s face in a crowded metro car and if you object to this concept in any way you are a fascist

people in real life: hey man how’s it going

[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.