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theotherchaospixel · 5 months ago

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so many thoughts running through my mind; just gonna spitball real quick

yeah, softlocks are no good. alternatively, you can only continue by going back to a previous time or save or checkpoint and trying again; this is back-tracking, and players might hate that even more than softlocks. also, don't wanna make it so the Orpheus player feels like they're having to protect or walk on eggshells around the Eurydice player; that's an escort mission, and is even more lowly regarded than softlocks & backtracking; i mean, team fortress 2 had an escort mission mode early in development, and it wasn't fun for this very reason: it's boring for both escortee & escorter.

that said, there are games which have made all of those types of problems interesting. stanley parable & portal comes to mind. those two examples at least use their story & dialogue to make the softlock less frustrating & more like an easter egg. bioshock infinite is one big escort mission, but your escortee can't be killed & in fact helps you a lot. team fortress itself uses the different classes & characters to make players naturally feel like they're working as a team, even though none of them particularly need to do so. legend of zelda uses weapons & tools as a prize in dungeons in order to make back-tracking feel different in technique than normal backtracking.

i'm also reminded of that one textpost i saw from forever ago which used the medium of item descriptions in RPG to imply a story, like it starts with "this blade means something to you, but you don't know what" to "your late wife's blade" as it levels up or you progress.

then there's like left 4 dead, where there's a respawn condition - if a player dies and is not saved, they can come back once a certain amount of progress is reached without them.

i'm imagining a version of this game where - as the eurydice character could conceivably die at any moment - the world is noticeably different in her absence, and noticeably different each time. like, the color red disappears when she's absent, or some puzzles require a different, much harder solution. that way, there's like... a point to the failure, but it doesn't completely negate things. it feels natural to me for it to be a horror game, where the horror is in not knowing, not having total control over the state of the game. maybe, like lethal company & some other games have done recently, include proximity chat that can just falter on its own, creating a sense of discomfort and worry based on the assumption that something bad happened. i mean, that's how the original myth goes: on the way back, they talked, but at some point, Eurydice went silent, and in his worry, Orpheus turned to look.

there also should be like a purpose for the Orpheus character: realistically, I think a lot of players would probably realize "oh, i can't look at Eurydice, but she needs to do something, so I'll just look straight down or straight up & let her do that." that's both lame & boring. so, maybe they have their own puzzles to solve, their own things to do. maybe they're not even playing the same game: maybe Orpheus is doing puzzles but Eurydice has to play a shooter, maybe Eurydice is doing platforming but Orpheus has to play a rhythm game, maybe Orpheus has to work with RPG rules but Eurydice gets free movement. definitely feels like there should be some asymmetry to the gameplay.

maybe there shouldn't be any voice chat. maybe there's story that the characters talk through, and there's things that the players can make the characters call out, but, taking a page out of journey's book, maybe it pairs up 2 players totally randomly, 2 players that may have never met before; that way there's stakes to being sure to play the game right, that way the state of the failure condition completely changes, where it stops being a failure to progress in the game & starts being a cessation of connection. i think you could get really psychological with that. you start playing the game, get paired up with someone you don't know, and continue through until one of you makes the fatal mistake of looking at each other, at which point the connection breaks and you have to live with the loss of this person you've gotten to know, gotten used to, and have to start over with someone new; your progress doesn't reset, but you - the player - are directly affected by the loss. much like the story itself. i mean, orpheus doesn't just die after losing eurydice, he doesn't lose his progress, but he does lose a connection that he may never get back.

fuck, i wanna play this now.

Here's a useless thought my head just supplied me with that I absolutely can't use.

Co-op game where if one player sees another, they die.

Both die? Just the one who does the seeing? Just the one who is seen? All players or just one crucial character? Do reflections count?

"Don't turn around. I'm right behind you. I'm going to put the mcguffin down behind you and go around the corner, I'll tell you when it's safe to turn around; let me know when you're looking away again."

#art #game idea

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marveltaughtmetoread · 3 months ago

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One thing I find really interesting is the way creators can go "ya'll know I always try to see the bright side of things and give people the benefit of the doubt" and my reaction can be "no" whilst it still being true that they might be that type of person because the nature of being a creator means I might never see that side of them

Being a creator means putting yourself on line, yes, but you are frequently only putting one aspect of yourself on line, your content is geared towards one type of thing, so that is the way the audience will see you

You see this especially with blogs on Tumblr, I have multiple different blogs catered to a particular type of content I want to engage with, this blog for example is catered towards fandom stuff, so I reblog a lot of fandom related content, and make text posts dedicated to look at parts of a piece of media I find interesting

If you're just following this blog, you might not know that about my political affiliations or anything outside of fandoms because that's not what this blog is for, so I don't post about it

But it also goes beyond that

My posts do not reflect this, but in my personal life I am an accepting person, people can have different views to me, and I might engaging in a discussion to better understand those views, but I'm not going to try and force you to agree or cut you off because you disagreed with me, I recognise that differences in opinion are a fact of life,

But I also recognise that my posts do not convey that, simply because I simply don't write posts for the stuff that doesn't bother me because that's not what the posts are for

The textposts are dedicated to the parts that mattered enough to me to write several paragraphs on it, but that means that being wound up is overrepresented on this blog

And that's what happens with the creators, they make content about the stuff that winds them up, the stuff that matters enough to them to dedicate an entire video to, so when you engage with their content you are seeing them be critical of a topic, but that doesn't mean that in their personal life they aren't mellow and forgiving, it's just that that's not what they make content to discuss

And yet, even within that, I only engage with the creators who treat their subject respectfully, who - even in their disgust - disagree with the actions not the person, who whilst they might be occasionally petty, do not engage in harassment and low blow behaviour towards the topics at hand, they might dislike the topic they're talking about, and have very little nice to say about it, but they're not spewing hatred or encouraging rage towards other people

So, whilst my immeasurable thought isn't that they are "a positive and forgiving person", I see the kindness and respect with which they treat topics they disagree with and that's what draws me in

#vina rambles #I just think that's intersting how the content we put out online is a reflection of us and yet doesn't show us in our entirety #I like watching video essays and commentary channels #so I watch a lot of content analysing a piece of media or disagreeing with other creators #but I also don't like hating on creators or others for holding a view #we can disagree but that's different hating someone for disagreeing #if that makes sense #and I like to engage with creators who seem to get that #and in a way that reflects their positive attitude because they are choosing to be kind even when they disagree #it's just that their content is focused on topics they disagree with so their kindness is easy to overlook #this was a ramble

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dwimmerlaiks · 5 months ago

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So! text posting. I am doing this. I am trying this. I am sitting at my desktop setup and typing on a keyboard about my day.

actually, not about my day yet. you know one thing that I've been thinking about every now and then is what emojis (or other indicators in text) feel usable and authentic to use to express laughter. I used to use the crying laughing emoji a lot (I think that's an age thing? as in, generational?) you know the one - 🤣🤣. I still do with close friends but like, on the more public internet or in conversation with people I don't know that well it feels a little off, not because it's dated but because it's become like, how can I put this, you know like a right-wing-pseudo-sarcasm/pwn type of reaction from muskminions etc. so it doesn't feel fun to use anymore. so I've been experimenting with stuff like hahahhaha and hehehhe (I get good mileage out of hehe and variations, I think ultimately I'm a hehe type of person) but it never has the same vibe! and there's no emoji that really expresses the same thing. like you know - lmao but in the authentic 2005 lmao way. no irony just hehehhahahhahaheheh. it's a conundrum.

anyway back to the main topic. I'm trying to build a habit out of the textposting again, and I'm trying to build a bunch of other habits. But I'm trying not to overdo it, not to go into a direction where I feel pressured or overdo it in a self-optimiziation type of way. It's just that - the past years I did a dual study/work type of thing and got another degree (number three hehe. but not a phd or another graduate degree. just a BA in a different field alltogether). and with lots of other things going on I didn't really have the opportunity to do a lot of .. hmm, settled type of things. Or try new routines. I felt hurried a lot and my life didn't feel like it had room for many new routines. But now! Life is still busy (like everyone else's!) BUT I moved into an apartment where - at least from my position, I don't plan on moving out of soon, have a job I want to keep and that offers some stability, so I might stay in this place, with this setup, a little longer this time (might WANT to stay), etc. So there's room for new routines! For example:

I've been really intimidated by reading. I used to be a big time reader, well you know the story, many people I think have the same experience - but then came along a much shorter attention span, no time, etc. and all of sudden I didn't read anymore. Sad! But now I've got a pretty long daily commute (by train) and on my way to work I READ. And it works! I had to force myself (helped that reception is bad on that particular journey haha) in the beginning but now I'm looking forwards to it and I've finished quite a few books already.

I want to draw every day. I've set a time span for 20 minutes that I try to draw every day. This amount works for me because I do most things in 20 minute spans (using a timer), if I can't focus. (really bad days I go down to 10 minutes of one task continuously. but almost all days 20 minutes is perfect. I know most systems that use this method recommend like, 40 minutes to do one task continuously but - in this economy?? lol. couldn't be me. anyway I don't draw every day but it's also helped me to just lower the stakes, be less intimidated. sometimes I'll just set a timer and take the closest type of drawing tool I can find and doodle pinterest stuff on shitty lose paper. sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's great, sometimes it's just so that I can cross it from my to do list, sometimes I just don't do it but it's already been a worthy experiment if only because - it's just not a big deal anymore.

I think that's my main goal with these things - make them be not a big deal anymore. I get way into my head with a lot of things. trying to find ways around that.

final boss is still EXCERCISE. ugh. I'm using the 20 minutes method for that too. even just stretching for 20 minutes a day would be an improvement. sometimes I sit on my home trainer (the bike type of thing) and play animal crossing. that's a good motivator. but this is the hardest. I think it comes down to that I find joy in moving my body but also don't have to leave the house to do it (it will simply not happen if I have to leave the house to go to a gym or class or whatever. leaving the house for things like this is simply quite unattractive in general, I'm sorry, but I have to speak my truth). but I can feel my body calcifying as I type and it doesn't deserve this fate yet, it's always been there for me. need to treat it as well as I can. SIGH.

good night!! I hope everyone reading this (and also those who didn't) had a splendid day!

#oh no I forgot my tag for this #i will look it up and come back #a tag for my personal blogging revival #oh no that's a terrible tag #I will revisit at another time #personal

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bear-momma · 2 years ago

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🏖 Beach Day! 🏖

🐚 Grab your swimsuit and get changed, we're going to the beach! I have a bag for you to collect shells in, and I'll carry our things.

🐚 Pick your favorite towel to spread on the sand and I'll pack it. And pick some snacks! The ride is long, and you'll want something to eat on the way.

🐚 Don't forget your sunscreen, I know you're excited and I know it doesn't smell great, but it's important you don't get burned!

🐚 The water feels so funny on our feet! Can you spot any sea creatures from here? I see a crab on the sand. Watch him dig around!

🐚 We can try to build a sand castle, but I'm not very good. I'll rely on your expert engineering! It's okay if it doesn't come out right, I'll still stick a flag in the top and call it ours.

🐚 When the sun starts getting low we'll have to leave. I know you don't want to go, but it's getting late and you're exhausted.

🐚 You can sleep on the car ride home. I even packed a blanket for you. But first, drink this juice. You spent a lot of time in the sun and it's important to rehydrate.

🐚 You're so cute dozing off, I'll turn down the radio so you can rest.

🐚 Once we're home I'll carry you inside. I'll gently wake you so you can shower, sand in the bed is a bad idea. You'll protest, but I'll eventually convince you.

🐚 Then you'll be in bed, your body still moving as if you were swimming, and you'll wrap up in the blanket. I'll kiss your forehead. I'll turn on the nightlight. Then you'll drift into sleep, and in your dreams you will rule over a sand kingdom from your elegant sand castle.

🐚 Until tomorrow's adventure, little one 💛

#trying a different type of textpost #please let me know what you think!!#bear grumbles #agere #cglre #safe agere #carereg #cgre #caregiver #carer #age regression #dont sexualize my regression

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telomeke · 1 year ago

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Reblogging to add things I've learnt transcribing images of text (only on laptop though) and describing images:

If you right-click on an onscreen image while on Google Chrome – you can search for that image, and Google will automatically recognize the text contained in it (including other language fonts, like Thai, Chinese, Tamil, Korean, Japanese, etc.). You can select the text and copy it directly using Google, which means you can also tidy it up and format it in MS Word, or even in Tumblr directly before posting.

If you right-click somewhere on the screen that is not part of the image, you can draw a window over the part of the image (or anything else onscreen) to let Google know you want it to search for what's specifically in the window, which is useful for transcribing only the text part of an image. (To draw the window, click and hold down the mouse button, then drag to open a window over any text you want Google to search for and/or transcribe.)

Doing either of the above means you can go directly from screen to text without needing to save the image and uploading it into an OCR website.

Sometimes if a post has many reblogs, I often try scanning through the reblog list to see if anyone else has already described it. If there is already a described version, I'll leave a like for the person who reblogged the (undescribed) post on my dash, but then go on reblog the described version instead. The time this saves can be put to use describing other posts. Of course, scanning the reblogs in the notes is tedious, so I'll only spend a minute or so doing that, less if time is pressing.

If you can't find an already described version of a post by scanning the reblogs, you can also search for it by pasting any transcribed and copied text into a Google search. You can then reblog any described version that Google finds. It's surprising how successful Google can be at this. (This only saves formatting time since you already have the text transcribed and copied, but to me that's the tedious bit and I try to avoid it if I can.)

Transcribing and searching for textposts this way is especially useful for tracking down Twitter posts that were put on Tumblr as images. You can then copy the text directly from the source (useful for long threads on Twitter). If I'm not up to it, I will link directly to Twitter by pasting the tweet's URL into Tumblr, whereupon the link will automatically appear as an image with ALT text (in dashboard view). This also attributes the source of the text, which is the correct thing to do anyway.

If I can find the Twitter post, I like to add the UTC time and date of of the post as well, so that it is anchored in time. The time and date on a Twitter post is your local time and date, so I usually ask Google what the time and date would be in UTC.

When typing out a Twitter handle, I use a zero width non-joiner after the '@' so that Tumblr does not automatically turn it into a link, which sometimes happens.

When typing out timestamps and dates, it's better to keep certain blocks of text together for better legibility. For example, you don't want Tumblr to break up '3:00PM UTC', with '3:00PM' at the end of a line and 'UTC' at the beginning of the next line. Nor do you want '5 April 2024' to be broken up as '5 April' on a different line from '2024'. To prevent this, replace the original spaces with no-break spaces.

To keep hyphenated words together, use the non-breaking hyphen instead.

I think the Internet may be divided on this, but if an image already has ALT text I prefer to leave it undescribed in the blog text. I read somewhere that folks who use a text-to-speech reader find having both ALT text and the image description in the blog text to be highly annoying, because they have to listen to essentially the same thing twice.

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How to Keep Doing Descriptions (from someone who does a fuckton)

Plain text: How to Keep Doing Descriptions (from someone who does a fuckton)

This is a list aimed mostly at helping people who already write IDs; for guides at learning how to do them yourself, check my accessibility and image description tags! I write this with close to two years of experience with IDs and chronic pain :)

Get used to writing some IDs by using both your phone and your computer, if you can! I find it easier to type long-form on my laptop, so I set up videos and long comics on my phone, which I then prop up against my laptop screen so I can easily reference the post without constantly scrolling or turning my head

I will never stop plugging onlineocr.net. I use it to ID everything from six-word tags to screenshots of long posts to even comic dialogue! On that last note, convertcase.net can convert text between all-caps, lowercase, sentence case, and title case, which is super helpful

Limit the number of drafts/posts-to-be-described you save. No, seriously. I never go above 10 undescribed drafts on any of my four blogs. It doesn’t have to be that low, but this has done wonders (italics: wonders) for my productivity and willingness to write IDs. If I ever get above that limit, even if it’s two or three more, I immediately either describe the lowest-effort post or purge some, and if I can’t do that then I stop saving things to drafts no matter what. No exceptions! Sticking to this will make your life so much easier and less stressful

My pinned post has a link to a community doc of meme description templates!

Ask! For! Help! Please welcome to the stage the People’s Accessibility Server! It’s full of lovely people and organized into channels where you can request/volunteer descriptions and ask/answer questions

I make great use of voice-to-text and glide typing on my phone to save my hands some effort!

Something is always better than nothing!!! A short two-sentence or one-sentence ID is better than no ID at all. Take it easy :)

If you feel guilty about being unable to reblog amazing but undescribed art, try getting into the habit of replying to OP’s post to let them know you liked it! This makes me feel less pressured to ID absolutely everything I see

This is a sillier one, but I tag posts I describe as “described” and “described by me.” When saving to drafts, I never preemptively tag with “described by me,” since for some reason that always makes me feel extra pressure and extra stress. Consider doing something similar for yourself if that applies!

I frequently find myself looking at pieces of art which feel like they need to be considered for a bit before I can write an ID for them, and those usually get thrown into drafts, where the dread for writing a comprehensive ID just builds. Don’t do that! Instead, try just staying in the reblog field for a bit and focus on the most relevant aspects of the piece. Marinate on them for a little; don’t rush, but don’t spend more than a handful of seconds either. I find after that the art becomes way easier to describe than it initially seemed!

On that note, look for shortcuts that make IDs less taxing for you to do! For example, I only ever describe clothes in art if they’re relevant to the piece; not doing that every time saves a lot of time and energy for me personally

Building off of that, consider excusing yourself from a particular kind of ID if you want to. Give yourself a free pass for 4chan posts, or fanart by an artist who does really good but really complex comics, whatever. Let it be someone else’s responsibility and feel twice as proud about the work that you can now allot more energy to!

As always, make an effort to find and follow fellow describers! It’s always encouraging to get described posts on your dash, and I find that sometimes I’m happier to ID an undescribed post when the person who put it on my dash is a friend who tagged it with “no ID”

TL;DR: To make ID-writing less stressful and more low-effort, use different devices and software like onlineocr.net and voice-to-text, limit the amount of work you expect yourself to do, and reach out to artists and other describers!

#accessibility #i realize i use google a lot #👀

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coldwind-shiningstars · 7 years ago

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I've been really, really having issues the past few weeks (multiple meltdowns, also now I have a hole in my wall, etc) and I just now thought to look up the side effects of depo provera, which I started about three weeks ago

you're not supposed to take it if you have depression/a mood disorder. I hardcore have a weird combo of mental illnesses that nobody can decide what they are. why did my doctor not tell me this. why did I just now learn that side effects include depression and mood swings. why!!!

#why is birth control awful #why are periods awful enough that i keep trying different types of birth control #why are ovarian cysts a thing #anyway #insert angsty textpost here

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arthurmorganwateringhole · 3 years ago

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Opening Up the Western

How Red Dead Redemption 2 Freed the “Western” from the Grip of Traditional American Values; or how RDR2 Made the Cowboy Sexy

I joked in an old post that Arthur Morgan is the first cowboy to appeal to a more modern audience -- ‘modern’ meaning a diverse demographic no longer confined to the cis white straight man. I’m not surprised that, for a blog of my size, that is one of my more popular posts and met with no contention. So many fans of Red Dead 2 are not only newcomers to the series but to the genre of the Western itself, many of whom had never touched a Western film or story simply because of its associations with American chauvinism and colonial settler violence. So, how is Arthur Morgan so universally appealing? What does he bring that so many anti-Westerns, a subgenre of films that critique the defining tropes of the Western, haven’t done before him?

Well, let’s talk about it.

Here we are, how Arthur Morgan rescued the genre of the Western and made it way, way more palatable.

[Disclaimer: I will be using GIFs freely searchable via the ‘gif’ function of the textpost. I will also credit images if necessary. Uncredited images mean they were my screengrabs. ]

Read below the cut for the full essay! (BEWARE OF SPOILERS!)

The Gun-Slinging Hero

In a lot of ways, Arthur Morgan is a familiar hero. The Western isn’t necessarily a story about cowboys. It is, however, necessarily a story of the gunslinger. Whether he be a sheriff, a Robin Hood-esque outlaw, or a cowboy, he is nevertheless a skilled shootist, often working alone, and pitted against unequivocally bad guys. The anti-Western (a subgrenre of classic hollywood films which emerge earliest in the 60s) somewhat turn this trope of the unfailingly good gunslinger on its head by instead critiquing this lone figure as troubled, haunted by a past, and unable to survive in a society structured by morals and laws. In short, the Western does not question the gunslinger’s ability to leave behind a trail of bodies. I would go so far as to say that the Western refuses to look at this trail of bodies. The anti-Western, however, will constantly remind the hero of their body count as one of the many flaws which make them tragic.

Clint Eastwood as Will Munny in the anti-Western, Unforgiven (1992). Will Munny is a reformed outlaw and widower who is trying to make ends meet as a hog farmer. A cowboy, fascinated by stories of his past, asks him to join him on the hunt for a $1000 bounty, to which Will responds, ‘I ain’t like that anymore, kid.’

In this regard, Arthur Morgan isn’t all that far-off from a very familiar figure in cinematic history. He is a skilled gunslinger with a body count. He lets everyone know he’s a bad person and frequently contemplates the sins of his past. Yet, he differs in drastically different ways too. To begin with, this haunted gunslinger trope is often running away not just from his past but from the death of, typically, a family member, especially a wife or a lover. Due to the death of this loved one, the anti-Western hero is emotionally closed off and melancholy in disposition. Clint Eastwood is famous for portraying this type of cowboy, whose film posters and iconic performances center on the grimacing cowboy unfazed by the monstrosities committed by himself and others.

In the Revenant (2015), frontiersman Hugh Glass is haunted by his dead wife and son, who are members of the Pawnee tribe. Note that the trope of the tortured widower is condensed with surreal representations of colonial settler violence, thereby mixing the personal tragedy of losing family with the more historical problem of genocide and Western expansion.

The framing of Arthur Morgan, strangely enough, both embraces and rejects this trope. As we play Red Dead Redemption 2, we learn that Arthur has an unrequited love with the widow Mary Linton, whom he almost married once but ultimately let go, despite his persisting feelings for her, out of fear for her safety and wellbeing. Thus, Mary Linton is spared becoming the collateral for Arthur’s moral reformation. She lives, and her rejection of his lifestyle is all the reminder he needs that he hasn’t done good things in his life.

On the other hand, we have the deaths of Eliza and Isaac. I know this is going to be controversial (considering the ambiguity of Eliza’s relationship with Arthur and how the fandom likes to interpret her as a ‘dead wife’ figure for Arthur). It’s worth noting that, in his conversation with Rains Fall and Sister Calderón, Arthur doesn’t really think of Eliza as a wife he lost (he only regrets letting go of Mary aka ‘a woman who loved me’). They very explicitly never married, as he didn’t want to make promises he couldn’t keep (a paraphrase of his own words), but he otherwise thought of her as ‘a good kid,’ having only been 19 years old when she became pregnant with their son. By all accounts, I think the real tragedy and ghost of Arthur’s past is Isaac himself, with Eliza being somewhat of a friend or co-parent whose death he also regrets.

Yet is exactly on this point that Arthur differs. The deaths of his son and co-parent have done nothing to his otherwise happy-go-lucky attitude, or the excitement he feels when robbing a train [credit to @f--hawk for finding out via mods that he smirks beneath the bandana during the train robbery mission cutscene]. Neither do these deaths motivate him to leave the outlaw lifestyle, as it did for aforementioned character Will Munny in the film Unforgiven. Whatever moral reformation Arthur experiences as a result of this trauma does not manifest outwardly, but it doesn’t stop him from living his life either. As such, Arthur Morgan occupies this liminal space between the Western hero and the Anti-Western hero, neither heroic nor fallen; not widowed but still grieving; cognizant of the weight of his actions yet constantly living in the present.

This in-between-ness actually makes a good beginning for a video game protagonist, as it’s precisely this ambiguity that gives the player freedom to decide how Arthur develops. In this sense, Arthur is already more accessible than his cinematic predecessors. Loss is a memory, not an anchor, and players are free to contemplate how his actions will affect him rather than a predetermined path. (Though there’s an argument to be made that the game definitely wants players to choose the path of redemption for Arthur).

In a lot of ways, the writing of Arthur Morgan as a character is a wholesale rejection of the emotionally closed-off, brooding, and fallen hero archetype that so frequently graces the Western genre. As one of the characters mention, Arthur is always smiling. He is prone to self-deprecating humor and lighthearted banter. His responses to shit going down are the type of lines you’d normally hear from the mouth of a comic side relief in films [for instance, his sarcastic remark after trying to escape the trolley, ‘Does this trolley go to Tahiti?’ is an example of his surprisingly bombastic and humorous disposition].

More importantly, he laughs -- heartily and frequently. Clint Eastwood might smirk. John Wayne might flash a smug grin. But Arthur Morgan smiles with his whole heart and inflects every chortle with emotion. Just hear this bellowing laughter of his when he wins 36 cents in a game of blackjack.

Below, you’ll find a clip of Arthur being a vocal supporter of the theatrical arts:

youtube

In short, Arthur isn’t defined by his pain, neither does the narrative of Red Dead flaunt the sins of his past constantly through dialogue and imagery. There’s a purpose behind all this, of course. It makes Arthur’s willingness to help out complete strangers, even at his own expense, more plausible due to his easygoing and helpful nature. If, as sister Calderon says, helping people makes him smile, then it’s more believable for us as the audience and the player to see Arthur Morgan as a complicated individual whose cheerful disposition adds nuance to a tried-and-tested cinematic archetype.

Romancing the Cowboy

Okay, so far Arthur Morgan is unconventional, for sure, but how is he more appealing to a 21st-century audience? There are signposts throughout the game and Arthur’s writing which suggest that the writers behind Red Dead 2 wanted to appeal to a broader audience than the traditional consumers of Westerns. In other words, the presence of certain tropes and imagery show that the developers were trying to appeal to so many more people than just the cis white man. Given how handsome Arthur is, women for sure is one of those newer groups brought into the Western fold. [Note, by ‘women’ I don’t just mean cis straight women either. I would further argue that Arthur has a universal charm that members of the LGBTQA community and people of color can rally behind, being a bisexual woman of color myself]

To open up the Western and reimagine the broody gunslinger, Red Dead 2 introduces two genres into the series, which shape Arthur as a heartthrob and alluringly sensitive soul: the Medieval Romance and Romanticism.

The Medieval Romance

The medieval romance is an old and varied genre that is difficult to pinpoint. Not to mention, the genre changes depending on the region and language we’re focusing on. For our purposes, the medieval romance is a type of fictional narrative. Structurally, these narratives are episodic and prominently feature chivalry/chivalric duty, knights, adventure, and courtly love. Many might be familiar with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, aka the Arthurian legend. In the romance version of this myth (i.e. not the Welsh folklore but the English textual co-optation of the legend), the knights of the round table often go off in their own tales of adventure, with each tale serving as an episode that takes the heroes to different locations and challenges.

Is this beginning to sound familiar? Red Dead Redemption ostensibly follows this bare bones structure of the medieval romance. There is a core group with a sovereign leader (Dutch, in this case) surrounded by his loyal outlaws who all abide by a code. Remember, chivalry isn’t just some outdated way to talk about being nice and courteous to women. Chivalry also represents the codes of loyalty a knight upholds as a representative and champion of his liege lord. Thus, it is very fitting for us to think of the Van Der Linde gang as a group of knights abiding by a certain code that, while not explicitly defined, hinges on loyalty and a sense of honor (or in their case, honor among thieves). In fact, even the camp life is reminiscent of courtly life, with fêtes, singing, and their own micropolitical squabbles. Another facet of chivalry is how a knight treats with noblewomen and ladies. A chivalrous knight is always ready to be at the call of his lady, coming to her rescue or championing her in tournaments. The romantic tropes that come from this gendered dynamic survives today as the knight-like readiness of Arthur to help women and always treat them with utmost respect -- something that not every man in the camp actually do *cough Micah and Duch cough*

More to the point (in terms of how this makes Arthur sexy), the medieval romance is most famous for portraying courtly love. Courtly love too is a vague term, but you can readily identify it as often a star-crossed romance between a lady and a knight. Often there is something preventing them from coming together, whether it be class difference (for instance, a Queen and her knight, like Guinevere and Lancelot) or war keeping the lovers away from each other. Courtly love is depicted in art as elevated, not merely a carnal or romantic arrangement. Court lovers are often depicted exchanging letters, or often a knight will perform life-threatening/valiant feats in order to prove his love and loyalty to his beloved.

(Taken from La morte d’Arthur, this artwork shows King Arthur catching sight of his knight Lancelot embracing his wife Queen Guinevere. This love triangle is the quintessential doomed love affair in Western literature)

By now, I hope you’re starting to see some big motifs that are clearly at work in RDR2. Star-crossed lovers, elevated courtship, loyalty, tragedy, and circumstances preventing both lovers from being happy are staples of a rich literary tradition that informs our idea of romantic love in the modern world. More importantly, these tropes are blatantly present in Arthur Morgan as a loyal knight whose main point of narrative tension stems from the personal happiness of being with Mary Gillis vs fulfilling his duty as an outlaw loyal to Dutch and his ideology.

I would like to note that, whenever modern works invoke older literary forms, the effect tends to be elevatory. Notice how none of this is really a major theme in RDR1. We’re not supposed to imagine John as an adventuring knight caught in the highs and lows of criminal courtly life. John’s story is more reminiscent of the anti-Western. On the other hand, Arthur’s feats and tragic love story with Mary hearken back to these historical tales of timeless love and literally knights in shining armor. We’re supposed to think of Arthur as noble, in both senses of the world. In this vein, I don’t think it’s an accident that his very Welsh name of Arthur Morgan was chosen, considering how both Arthur and Morgan le Fay are major players in the Arthurian legend.

Note, it’s not an accident that, in the epilogue, 12-year-old Jack is telling his father about the legend of King Arthur and the knights of the round table. In a way, this is the game’s way of sublimating Arthur and his life into legend. He lived and died tragically, much like his namesake, and in the epilogue he continues to live on in legend, sublimated into fantastical tales for children who seek to be transported to other fictional worlds.

To summarize this subsection, the medieval romance is formally and thematically pervasive in RDR2, making it more unique among other Westerns and anti-Westerns. Arthur Morgan, as a character reminiscent of noble knights of legend, embodies the heroes of both medieval and modern romance.

Romanticism

Arthur contemplating life while sitting on the precipice of Horseshoe Overlook, VP by @papauue

Now, let’s talk about a relatively more modern artistic movement that actually has more overt connections to RDR2′s story and a genre famous for catering to sensitive souls and women.

Historically speaking, romanticism covers a lot, especially (from the German side of things) a movement of philosophy that is all about self-elevation/self-liberation, experiencing the sublime, and encountering nature as an ambivalent yet powerful force that can inspire great transformation.

We won’t get into any of that, but we will get into Romanticism’s ramifications for late 18th-century/early 19th-century culture in Western Europe and North America. Romanticism is the moment of broody poets (Lord Byron, Mr. and Mrs. Shelley, William Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, etc), and in this moment we see a turn away from the cosmopolitan pretensions of the Enlightenment in Europe to the purifying retreat of nature and its aesthetic pleasures.

Visually, emphasis on the poet as a lone wanderer as an agent ready to submit to higher powers pervades art in this time. The famous painting by German Romantic, Caspar David Friedrich is a great example of the individual whose seclusion in the great abyss of nature inspires self-elevation.

It always struck me as funny that, cinematography-wise, Red Dead Redemption 2 doesn’t really force shots like this in cutscenes, but the world building and design of RDR2′s open world for sure enables the player to likewise seek refuge and commune with the austere landscape of the North American wilderness. The screenshot below is one of my first screenshots from my first playthrough. The scenery honestly inspires the Romantic sublime, and I definitely think this was deliberate on the part of RDR2 writers and developers!

As you can imagine, the emphasis on landscape, self-liberation, freedom, and experiencing the world ‘through a grain of sand, eternity in an hour’ (from William Blake) works its way into RDR2 via Arthur’s journal. In a previous post of mine, you can get more of the history behind journaling and travel literature as a background on Arthur’s naturalist aspirations. But here, we’re going to talk about the act of journaling itself, i.e. the act of writing prose in a moment of self-reflection, as a byproduct of romanticism and the wandering poet.

Though journaling became a more popular activity in the 1700s, especially with the rise of epistolary fiction and novels, it became more commonplace and standard in the 1800s. The quote below briefly sums up what journaling was used for in this time period:

“Nonfictional narratives of the disease—in texts ranging from diaries and memoirs to medical publications and political debates—were equally central in efforts to make sense of life, illness, and death in the nineteenth century.” - The Making of Social Disease by David S. Barnes

Journaling therefore is an activity of moral development and sensitive self-reflection. The journal is all about making a text to make sense of one’s life and experiences, and often these attempts reflect how nonsensical the world actually is. We definitely get this tone and struggle in Arthur Morgan’s journal, who often writes in his entries that he is at a loss as each failure brings the gang closer to their demise. This writerly, if not poetic, disposition in Arthur shows he is a brooding, sensitive soul beneath that facade of tough and smart-ass cowboy.

But there’s more to Romanticism in Red Dead 2 than landscape. Perhaps the most famous cultural byproduct of Romanticism is the popularity of consumption (i.e. pulmonary tuberculosis) as an aesthetic that makes one more attractive and sensitive.

I am not kidding. There is a great article about the history of consumption as sexy. I recommend this article here for a light and quick read on the subject.

To pull a quote from the article, let me sum up how consumption was seen as sexy in this time period:

“Because of its association with young women and poets, the disease itself came to represent beauty, romantic passion, and hyper sexuality. As far as illnesses went, it was considered to be rather glamorous, and in a culture half in love with death, it inspired its fair share of tributes. There are numerous romantic depictions of young women wasting away in death beds at the height of their beauty.” (from “Drop Dead Gorgeous”)

In addition to aesthetic, David S. Barnes (from the quote above) notes that the consumptive also embodies an idealized path toward self-redemption:

"Briefly stated, tuberculosis served as a key vehicle in the nineteenth century through which womanhood was associated with a kind of suffering that was morally and spiritually redeeming. Moreover, around the turn of the century, even as the French state and the medical and philanthropic communities were elaborating and actively promoting a new vision of tuberculosis as a social problem of the first magnitude, the older reading of the disease as a sign of redemptive suffering persisted and even thrived, in a sense complementing but also implicitly contesting the new sociomedical orthodoxy." (Barnes)

Although the figure of the sexy consumptive typically was a woman, as these historians will tell you, many men -- especially poets and artists -- were considered sexy for having the look of a consumptive. Their emotional outbursts, pale and lean builds, and tendency to die before they’re 30 made them highly appealing and romanticized in an era that was a little too fascinated with death.

Morbid as it is, the figure of the consumptive is where we get these Victorian beauty standards of pale skin, leanness/thinness, rouged cheeks and lips (from the bloody coughs), and artistic sensibility! In literature and art, the ailing consumptive also had a special relationship with nature, as treatment often required they stay in the country for recovery. As such, these consumptive souls were often seen as pure, sensitive, and mellow individuals who are above the earthly concerns of the city.

The aesthetic of the sexy consumptive survives today in vampire literature, as a romance subgenre that plays with the historical monster as an eternally youthful yet morally damned/tortured lover. So, even though this fetishizing of consumption back in the 1800s might come off as morbid and twisted to modern audiences, the cultural impact of romanticism remains with us today, albeit in other mutated forms.

Now, I set up all this historical context to talk about this big plot event in the story of Red Dead Redemption 2: Arthur contracts tuberculosis.

In the tragic conclusion of Arthur’s story, Arthur’s tuberculosis manifests after a rough fifth chapter, and the symptoms become flagrant: pale skin, bloodshot eyes, coughing up blood, fainting, inability to maintain weight, etc-- the supposed traits of the sexy consumption. Now, I don’t think it’s Rockstar’s intention to portray a sick and dying Arthur as sexy, but I do think that in giving him a disease that became less common in 1899 (it was scarier and more prevalent as a disease in the earlier half of the 1800s) is their way of elevating Arthur up as a Romantic Hero. His sensitivity as an artist and ailing health ascribe to him the aesthetic disposition of a poet and a Romantic. Like the beautiful tragic poets of the prior century, Arthur is now on this doomed trajectory toward redemption and self-liberation.

In a way, the consumptive also socially elevates Arthur. Consumption is typically the disease of the rich in 19th-century popular culture. Poets, artists, and repressed daughters of rich families were the more visible victims of this beautifying illness.

I’m not sure if I am still making sense here. And if anyone has questions or confused, I am totally happy to clarify whenever yall want. Basically though, the invocation of Romanticism as a genre in Red Dead 2 is all about making Arthur a Romantic hero whose relationship with nature isn’t so much just one of an outlaw’s but also one of a sensitive soul, whose curious mind leads to moments of pensive self-reflection and contemplations on life and death.

Miscellany and Conclusion

There are other elements that make Arthur an attractive hero for all, detracting from the typical masculine archetypes found in a Western. One thing I couldn’t really classify is Arthur’s compassion toward animals. The soft, breathy whispered “thank you” he gives to his dying horse in his final mission is one such example, but ultimately you’ll find a line of dialogue every once in a while that shows Arthur has a serious respect for animals, if not a soft spot for them. Albert Mason’s photography side missions are proof and point of this tendency in him.

I also don’t want to understate how Arthur, as a talented artist and writer, contributes to his sex appeal as a modern protagonist. Most cowboys in both the Western and anti-Western aren’t artists. In fact, I can’t think of a cowboy who just sketches by his lonesome while out in the wilderness. This attention to landscape and animals in their natural habitat, while explained in my aforementioned post, show a side of him that values the precious yet fragile beauty of nature. It’s sexy for a man to be so earnest in his relationship with the world, forever willing to learn and to appreciate his surroundings. Most cowboys/gunslingers are tamers of the natural world, but Arthur is most decidedly a courteous guest of nature doing his best to respect wildlife while surviving.

In the end, Arthur is a combination of past literary traditions, but such a masterful combination of old form means he is readily recognizable and appealing, because older genres always survive, in some form or fashion, in our modern world. The consumptive Romantic is now the sexy, sensitive vampire. The knight of medieval romance is now the kind man who champions his love via devotion and respect. Arthur Morgan is a critique of the Western’s moral failings, but he is also an enthusiastic rejection of the fraught and emotionally closed-off embodiment of the hypermasculine. He doesn’t just survive -- he lives in the world as a writer, artist, and gentle soul. It is through these combinations that Rockstar can repackage the Western and give us a beautiful and beloved hero like Arthur Morgan.

#Arthur Morgan #RDR2 meta #RDR2 analysis #Lia rambles #Red Dead Redemption 2 #RDR2 spoilers

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lacefuneral · 3 years ago

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OK I know that the big meme is to try and scare Twitter users from joining but Twitter is a super toxic place and I have some friends who have fled here so. (done by voice-to-text, there may be typos)

Open Tumblr on desktop to do this because not all of these options are available on mobile. You'll be able to find all of them in your settings.

make sure you set your dashboard to chronological

turn off the ability to see other peoples likes (for reasons explained in the next bullet points)

disable your likes as being visible & disable the blogs you're following from being visible

The reason for the previous bullet points is that the Tumblr like is not the same as other social media - it is used as a bookmark button. Often times people will bookmark content to look at it later (videos, long textposts, etc.) but it is not an endorsement of the content. Information on this website is much more dense than it is on Twitter which is more bite sized, so not everyone will have read the texts or watched the videos of posts they "liked." People can and they will use your likes against you. and just like Twitter, if you happen to be following someone and that person says something the people don't agree with, if you are following that person you can get pulled into the situation even if you know nothing about it. so for this reason pretty much all of Tumblr has unanimously agreed to have their likes and follow blogs hidden to prevent unnecessary infighting.

Choosing not to see other peoples likes on your dashboard follows the same principle and it is one of respect for your fellow user

The above may seem deeply weird to Twitter users but we have far less drama on this website. It is significantly more peaceful because we have decided to curate the community in this way. You don't necessarily have to hide your likes or your follows, but that's the reason why we as a community do that. It used to get as bad as it gets on Twitter, but it doesn't anymore. We have learned to live in harmony here. fighting still occurs certainly but not nearly to the same extent.

make sure that you set the toggle that enables you to see content that is filtered on iOS. This is entirely safe for work content that was filtered out by mistake but Tumblr hast to keep in place to appease Apple or some thing like that but it does hide lot of content and prevents users from communicating with one another.

If you are 18 or older make sure to input your birthday to prove your age and have "mature content" set so that it either appears on your dashboard as normal or that it appears blurred. A lot of content is mistakenly marked as mature as a form of censorship even if it is not graphic in the slightest. I have seen text posts that use the word "fuck" that have been marked mature

YOU CANNOT POST PORN HERE. YOU WILL GET BANNED. if you post something that isn't porn and it gets flagged, you can usually appeal it. but if it is actual porn (irl or illustrated), you're in hot water. do not tag posts as "NSFW" or "NSFT" (not safe for tumblr, an alternative many porn blogs used). invent a different acronym for reblogging dirty jokes, or you may get shadow banned. i use NSFM, personally.

That said, you're technically able to say whatever you want on this website within reason. It's not like Twitter where if you say you want to guillotine the rich you get suspended or something. But do be aware that like Twitter, all text can be picked up by Tumblr search. So if you type something like " I want Stede bonnet to crush my head with his thighs like a watermelon" there is a chance that other users will see that post if they look in the stede bonnet tag. (hi all!)

most celebrities do not use this website so you're able to talk about them without censoring their names. Just be aware that fans of that celebrity may see your post.

likewise do be careful if you're talking about groups that perpetuate transphobia, because those groups do use Tumblr just like they use Twitter. if T*RFs reblog or comment on your posts, block and ignore. do not platform them by arguing. you put your followers (and accounts you follow) at risk when you engage them. you also reenforce their held beliefs that trans people are aggressive. it isn't up to you to deradicalize them. you can report people for bigotry on this website but most of the time the reports don't actually do anything. So your best friend is the block button.

The difference between commenting in the tags, commenting in the replies, and commenting directly on the post is thus:

commenting on the tags is the equivalent to sitting in a room with thousands of people and commenting to those at your table. Other people might overhear you, but the message is intended for those at the table, your friends.

Commenting in the replies is the equivalent to standing up and walking over to the person who just gave a speech. It is intended for them. Other people can overhear it and they definitely will - which means that some people might stand up and walk over to you and start talking to you. Especially if you say something really rude.

Commenting in the reblogs is the equivalent of standing on top of the table and shouting to the entire room. you don't do this unless you feel like you're contributing to the post in a comedic fashion or you're adding information that others may find helpful. Otherwise, you look like a clown. Also by commenting on a post, as with the replies, you are opening yourself up to a response from anyone else in the room. So if you're rude on someone's post, or you're spreading misinformation, people are going to want to have a word with you. You don't get to use the response "this is my blog and I say what I want" - because you've made the decision to go on to someone else's post.

Now with every form of communication, the OP of the post will be able to read everything. So if you're writing in your tags and you start trauma dumping or writing lurid sexual fantasies or otherwise being a weirdo, the OP of the post may block you. the OP (or anyone) may also choose to highlight your tags or otherwise respond to them depending on what is said. Sometimes someone will write something very funny or very thoughtful, and that's usually why. They want others to see the contribution.

There is also the notion of "prev tags." culturally, this is a relatively new development and a lot of people were mad about it at first. But the purpose of prev tags is to nod in agreement at the metaphorical table. You're keeping the conversation amongst you and your friends. Whereas screenshotting someone's tags and adding them directly into the post is the equivalent of shouting "HEY GUESS WHAT THEY SAID!" so it's entirely contextual. prev tags is also used as a meme. For example someone may say something deeply absurd. And so people will blog that post and say "prev tags" in a chain, encouraging people to follow that chain to the inevitable conclusion. A funny example I saw recorded in video form, was a text post that said something about white haired anime boys. And there was a chain of like 20 people encouraging you to work your way through the reblog. And the punchline was "Santa Claus."

although there is an option now to automatically shorten posts, it is considered proper etiquette to tag long posts as such. this post will be one.

when you reblog a post and you tag it, there are three primary things you are doing. One is to comment on it, one is to apply any categorization you wish so that you can find the post again, and one is to add filter tags for your followers who don't want to see that type of post. The last one is normally reserved for triggers - things like blood or violence or flashing images. People have different policies on this, but most users are willing to tag their posts if you ask them to. So if you were deathly afraid of frogs, you could ask someone to tag frogs for you.

and yeah Tumblr filtering actually works. If you block a tag, you will get a pop-up that obscures the content if someone blocked a post with that tag or keyword in it, giving you the option of whether or not to engage. But if you are looking in Tumblr search, those posts will be screened out automatically so you won't even see the pop-up. I think it's because Tumblr assumes that when you follow a blog you're following someone you trust, whereas Tumblr search is the wild west and it's full of strangers - so they're like "nope we are not showing you your triggers at all."

as for the second use case, you don't need to reblog a post and add 1 million categorization tags. Because other people aren't going to see your reblog in the Tumblr search. so you're wasting your time if you're like "#ofmd #our flag means death #our flag means death stede #ofmd stede #ofmd stede bonnet #our flag means death stede bonnet" - you look silly. this only works if it is the original post. Also because of the way that Tumblr works most of those tags a redundant because if you so much as mention a keyword in your post it's probably going to end up in the tag

do not tag an original post with unrelated hashtags. You will clog up the tags and people will hate you.

it is recommended that you have anon asks disabled because a lot of people use them to be cruel. But a lot of people leave them open for people who are too shy to talk to them otherwise. There are also a lot of ask games that circulate which makes use of anon. Like having your friends give you compliments, but you don't know who they are. so it's a personal decision and you can change it any time. But if people are being cruel to you, don't let them. It is OK to close anon asks.

while twitter makes great use of alt text, it is much more common on this website to write image/audio descriptions, which are pasted directly into the body of the post. Either in the original post itself, or in the replies. If someone transcribes your post for you, the etiquette is to thank them, copy their transcript, paste it onto your original post, and add a credit for the person who transcribed it. A lot of people volunteer their time doing this for people who otherwise do not have the spoons to do it themselves.

always tag flashing images and flashing videos. Do not tag with "epilepsy" - that prevents epileptic users from communicating with one another, because their tag is full of content that can hurt them. it doesn't eliminate the problem entirely, but it's part of a cultural shift to make those spaces safer in the future.

art theft is bad. Always credit and link to original sources.

if you like a post, you should reblog it. That allows your followers to see it and gives the post more reach. The likes as I said before, function as a bookmark. They are also used to show emotional support to a friend.

Tumblr has recently introduced the concept of unrebloggable posts. You can make a post unrebloggable from the get-go or you can edit it later. you can also make it so that the original post remains rebloggable, but an individual reblog of it cannot be shared. So for example, I could make a shit post that takes off and people enjoy. And let's say someone was rude to me in response to the shit post. I could reblog my own post, say " don't be an asshole" - and then make it so that the "don't be an asshole" edition is not shareable, but leave the original shitpost to be shared. some people may choose to make their original post and unshareable if they are receiving too many notifications, they are being harassed, the original post had misinformation, or simply for fun. Some people have started a sort of "you can only reblog this post until x date" game.

Tumblr has a feature known as the read more. Read more is actually a lot more complex than most people realize. The read more allows you to hide a long string of text under it, sparing people on your dashboard from having to scroll a long time. But a read more is not a drop-down button. It is a redirect link that takes you to the original post. And because of this, if the original post is edited, you will always see the most up-to-date version under the read more. This makes it an excellent format for news posts with developing stories. But because of this set up, if the original post is deleted or the blog is deactivated/banned, the information underneath is lost forever. it is important to be aware of that. Even if you reblog that post, whatever is underneath is entirely determined by whether or not the original post can still be accessed. So if you want some thing to be archived, do not put it under or read more. If your blog gets wrongfully deleted, that information is gone and cannot be recovered unless you have cache on the way back machine.

do not use a default profile picture and do not have a blank blog (blog with no reblogs). You will scare the user base and they will block you on site. The first thing you should do upon joining Tumblr is immediately changing your icon and then finding a or two to reblog. This tells people that you are a human being, and not a bot.

you can have sideblogs on this website. In fact there is no limit to how many blogs you can own. The only limit is how many sideblogs you are permitted to make per day. Side blogs allow you to organize content by fandom or theme. However the side blog will always be tied to your main blog. You cannot delete your main blog and keep your sideblogs, you cannot select a sideblog to be your new main. And when you send someone an ask, comment in the reply section of a post, or click like on a post, it will display as your main blog. So total anonymity is not possible. You can, however, send and reply to DM using your sideblog, as well as answer asks directed towards the sideblog, and reblog a post (and comment in the comment section + tags) as that blog.

URL hoarding is when someone makes the decision to save a username by making a blank sideblog so other people cannot use it. this is considered kind of an asshole move, especially if you have a lot of URLs hoarded, but I think most users have at least one or two that they have saved for a rainy day. I know for a while I had a lot that were Spock themed. you are able to change your user name, but that releases it into the wild. So some people will hoard their previous usernames to prevent identity theft (as well as to redirect to their most current username if people are looking for them.) This is a different thing, but some people view them as being the same.

Tumblr does not use "OOMF" or "moots" - we usually just say the entire word of followers and mutuals. Some people might be confused if you use Twitter terminology here

i think that covers most of it. no i will not put this under a readmore. thank you.

#long post

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rebirthdinosaurs · 3 years ago

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content is getting longer

and no one is talking about it. analysis via really long textpost on this hellsite.

in prime vine and musical.ly days, i vividly remember talk of todays generation having a very short attention span- the six second videos rotting our brain and making anything longer than that no longer interesting and too overwhelming. then, vine died, and musical.ly turned into todays tiktok, and todays tiktok has expanded the length of videos to be anywhere from 3-10 minutes long. people on tiktok post whole videos in segments on their profile page- whole movies, even! tiktok having a function that allows people to go live also allows for the opportunity for people to go live for however long they want, which brings me to my next point: streamers.

even just on tiktok, i can think of an ASMRtist that literally goes live for 6-7-8 hours everyday- sunshinejazzy17- while simultaneously posting hours of content to her youtube. simmer lilsimsie goes live also everyday for hours on end, while also posting much shorter content on her main youtube channel everyday, and posting all of her streams on her side channel, moresimsie. these are not only two different genres of content, but also just the tip of the iceberg on the different genres that stream often and for many hours. there are a wide variety of gamers, which are very popular these days, makeup artists, nail artists, artist artists- you get my point.

the pinnacle of it all- youtube. i was first introduced to my interest in long videos via people on this very website obsessing over quinton reviews newest video five months ago, where he released an eight-hour long video as a part for for his collective and ongoing 22-hour long series about victorious and icarly, and the essential universe of it all. i watched all 22-hours and so did many other millions of people. i think conspiracy and analysis type videos rein supreme over this sort of hour long content- probably right next to gaming. when shane dawson was still relevant, in his prime years he was making documentary type videos that were a couple hours long. his old counterpart garrett watts and old camera man andrew siwicki have gone on to make videos that are a couple hours long exploring haunted places- see: the video released on garretts channel a couple weeks ago that is two hours long and guarantees another, upcoming, similar video at the end. that video got almost 3 million views.

i literally just watched a video that was almost two hours long by BoyzHubUltra about how izzy from total drama island isn’t crazy, and it got almost 600k views, and that’s what got me on this bender in the first place. not to mention, people like the theorizer have been making hours long videos for years now.

back on asmr, the ranges of asmr that there is- from typing on keyboards, to studying, to roleplaying, to gaming, to literal history asmr- makes the dedication of the creators pretty obvious, knowing most of their audience is only listening to it to fall asleep.

tbh, i haven’t even mentioned podcasts at all either, and that doubles with youtube since most podcasts also upload their content to youtube, but people are more easily able to just listen to hours of content while still doing everyday tasks like working or groceries. i actually just got finished with the first season of dungeons and daddies, which is a dnd podcast (and brings in a whole new can of worms that i’ll try not to delve into as much). when i started the first season, they were already about ten episodes into season two, and it took me about one or two months just to finish the first season. every episode was over an hour long, and there were 70 episodes. all in the first season alone.

i also listen to quite a few reddit podcasts, like rslash, who posts short videos everyday and has years worth of videos, and two hot takes which doesn’t release as often, but has hour long episodes when they do.

i could continue talking about the different genres and platforms where people are consuming long hours worth of content, but i need to try to wrap this up, and i’m sure i’ve only just barely scratched the surface of it all.

adults are convinced we hate to pay attention to things, but we don’t. we just focus our energy into paying attention to things we find interesting. it’s like movies, or that tv show with episodes as long as movies, but treated less seriously because they didn’t have as big of a budget when creating it. we focus our energy into consuming hours of content via livestreams, youtube videos, and podcasts, and to them it’s like we’re consuming nothing at all. it’s a similar effect to not considering fanfictions “real books” just because they’re not published. that fanfic you just read that’s the size of the lord of the rings books isn’t suddenly less impressive just because it was written by a 16 year old who hasn't graduated high school or moved out of their parents house yet.

to the older generation who aren’t aware of all this, who never had internet growing up and don’t bother learning, we’re just simply wasting time on the internet. maybe we should just keep this secret to ourselves and keep them oblivious to it- it’s funny to see the shoe fumble when it doesn’t know where it’s going.

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crystalninjaphoenix · 3 years ago

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Hello! I wanted to post a little thing I wrote, but I'm mostly a lurker that rarely posts and I realized I don't really know how to do that XD. I mean, the keep reading part that you can click and all that and the formatting of the text. Could you give me some advice, seeing that you post your works here? I figured asking someone experienced would be easier than trying to navigate it all by myself ^^

-🌹

Yeah, no problem, anon!

For starters, formatting text will be different on mobile and the desktop. The desktop also has two different posting formats, the old one and the "beta," which is similar to the mobile textpost format. I mainly use the old desktop version, but I know how to work all of them.

On the new "beta" desktop version, the readmore, as it's called, can be inserted onto any new line by clicking the icon at the far right, the little gray squiggly. You can also insert pictures, gifs, videos, etc. These icons appear whenever you press enter:

On the old version that I use, these icons still appear, but they look different. Luckily, the readmore is in the same place, though now represented by a rectangle with three dots inside it:

On mobile, type :readmore: on any new line. Do not type anything else on the line or it won't work. The readmore won't appear until after you post the thing, but it will be there.

On both desktop formats, highlighting text will give you the ability to change it. This includes traditional bolds and italics, but you can also insert links, add strikethroughs, and make the text bigger ("heading" on old, simply "bigger" on new). You can also change the color of the text on the new version. I think the best thing to do with the desktop formats is to highlight any text and mess around with the bubbles that pop up to get familiar with them.

Things are a bit different if you want to change the text on mobile. Some options can be access through highlighting the text like on desktop, though the options appear above the keyboard instead of above the highlighted text. But some options are accessed through tapping the little text icon that's always above the keyboard, the one that looks like "Aa". Tapping that will change the format of the whole text block that you're currently in, including making it bigger and starting bulleted or numbered lists.

I hope that helps! If you have any more questions I'd be happy to answer those, too ^-^

#asks answered #anonymous #🌹 anon

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hellcins · 4 years ago

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concerning the alternative scene's recent rise in popularity (and why it is likely to fall again):

warning !! essay long text under the cut

to give a bit of context, i was a pre teen to young adult from the mid 2000's to mid 2010, which i call the middle to end of that time's "alt scene boom". recently alternative culture experienced a rise in popularity again - funnily enough around the time a staple of that era's music scene, my chemical romance, announced their return (which i will come back to at a later point as they are, in fact, important to note, whether you personally like them or not) - and with that rise in popularity there weren't just new and younger people joining but some even found their love for the alternative subculture again. i use alternative as an umbrella term here as it should be. there are of course multiple different 'camps' hidden underneath that.

very recently i watched a documentary about the "death of the classic goth scene" which was very interesting in so far as it gave me an insight as to why i saw so many alternatively dressed people walking around in my teen years to a shocking dwindling of that number. the documentary explained that the goth subculture in itself got divided into more and more 'camps' (such as steampunk, cybergoth, victorian goth, etc) until there was no real "grapevine" between them anymore. to explain what i mean by that: when people start to gatekeep between those camps, communications stop. and as a consequence the bigger scene gets dissolved:

the alternative scene lives from new input and new ideas. if that is not given because you do not step outside your specific 'camp', don't let anyone in who's for example only interested in a specific aspect of that 'camp' and are also not allowed to take from another, or even just new people trying out something new entirely, then there also cannot be any growth because after a while there are no new ideas, no fresh input that would keep it alive.

that same thing already happened under the bigger umbrella of "alternative", people were forcefully dividing themselves or being divided into different camps like punk, goth, emo and others. while looking for a specific term and therefore identity under which to group to find others that might be interested in the same aspects of alternative culture that specific subculture stands for, it also led to people from those subcultures turning their back on the other subcultures they were technically siblings to. for that we can just use one of our generations favorite terms: gatekeeping.

the different subcultures gatekeeping their culture, fashion, history, music and so on led to an ending to the different 'camps' influencing each other. this proved fatal: the alt scene Needed each others influences to grow and change, and simply stay alive.

that is why bands like my chemical romance worked - because they took input from different subcultures across the board. basically, when people stopped holding hands, so to say, alt more or less "vanished" from the public eye.

if not the most popular, there is no denying that my chemical romance is the most influential alternative band of that specific time period. it even went outside the line of “alternative” as for example wearing military style jackets experienced a sudden boom in popular fashion after 2006 - the year my chemical romance published their most famous album the black parade and wore military jackets to each of their concerts. singer gerard way’s classic shaggy longish hair with bangs became known as the classic ‘emo’ haircut which then slowly made its way into mainstream fashion for boys everywhere. ‘guyliner’ was a broadly used term in teen magazines and even if men wearing eyeliner was done before, it was suddenly not just a thing for a specific subculture anymore. of course that all wasn’t received positively by everyone but nevertheless: alternative culture was seen and seen everywhere and you were able to find gerard way’s skeleton painted face on the same magazine page as hannah montana’s miley cyrus.

but why were they so influential? why did they rise to the top that fast and were known by most subcultures under the “alternative” umbrella?

simply put: they took inspiration from across the whole board and put it together. different aspects of different subcultures were made anew. fresh and accessible, they opened their arms to everyone, speaking for the outsiders and underdogs, as long as you listened to any type of rock music. and it worked because they themselves originated from different subcultures. musically, lead guitarist ray toro himself said his biggest influence was always the metal genre. rhythm guitarist frank iero was the biggest punk rock influence of the band, and the way brothers, singer gerard and bassist mikey, were both deeply into gothic rock and britpop. of course the broad scope of new jersey’s music scene, where the band originates, made all fans and members of those subgenres of rock music interact - and therefore influence each other.

it is a fitting example explaining why they were such a big influence and also why the alternative scene rose to popularity as it did. it also explains why it came to a fall: without new input, new influence, and gatekeeping between groups the scene stopped being accessible. it stopped growing and changing, until it stagnated and fell to obscurity again. while many of the bands didn’t stop making music and also didn’t stop being popular, the alternative scene in itself fell into obscurity.

now, as alternative culture experiences a sudden rise in popularity, more and more gatekeeping rules start cropping up, rules about who is a real punk and which parts of different subcultures you dare not take for your own. and that is exactly why it is likely to fail again. if this ‘revival’ of the alternative scene is supposed to make an upwards trend - and i call it revival, but let’s face it some of us have been there the whole time - then something has to give.

this concludes, as i fittingly said somewhere farther up in this essay of a textpost:

we have to start holding hands again.

#please read this #yes you may respond and or add to this #or share #please please interact #lolalovesu #please i had good thoughts for once

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