#we should ABSOLUTELY be taught to critically engage with media.

[dearqueerdeers]

no wait actually as an avid reader English classes pissed me off so bad in high school. before high school I just found them vaguely annoying because it was super easy stuff— the author says in paragraph 3 that daisy is mad. Which of these word is a synonym for “mad”?— but in high school they really started to lean into analysis that was deeper than “surface level”. Here’s the thing. I’ve been writing fanfiction since I was 11. I know how to read between the lines. I know how to analyze shit. Been doing it forever. So I get to English classes where they’re asking me to do that and I go “great! this will be fun!”— only to be told that I am, in fact, wrong, in my interpretation of whatever current book we were reading.

This happened a lot for a lot of books (I am autistic lmao), but the one that infuriates me to this day is when we read Things Fall Apart in my senior year English class. Note that we did not read Heart of Darkness, which supposedly this book was a response to, so I could very well be missing a chunk of analysis here. It essentially followed a man living in Nigeria pre-colonialism and followed his life as European “missionaries” slowly started invading the surrounding area & eventually his home. According to my English teacher, Heart of Darkness portrayed the indigenous people in African in a very negative light and erased a lot of their culture, and Things Fall Apart was written as a rebuttal to showcase the rich culture and interior lives of the people portrayed as “savages” in Heart of Darkness.

And yes, the book did a wonderful job of showcasing the presence of a thriving culture and the personhood of those living in Nigeria! However. This teacher absolutely refused to hear any analysis that painted the main character in a bad light. If you pointed out that any of his actions were bad and suggested that he had personal growth to do, she’d shut you down immediately. I specifically was told “it’s a different culture and you can’t judge them based on our cultural standards.” My class was told the protagonist was a good guy trying his best, & that’s what the book was trying to showcase. If you listened to my English teacher without ever touching this book, you’d probably think it was about a guy doing his best and who therefore didn’t deserve the violence he experienced at the hands of the colonizers. (Disclaimer here that shouldn’t need to be said but I’m saying it anyways: You can’t “deserve” to be colonized. No culture or individual person should ever be forced to endure colonization. Full stop, period, end of story.)

Here’s the thing. This dude sucked balls, guys. He murders his adopted son. He hits his kids. He abuses his wives. & the whole time shows no learning from any of these actions. And those actions formed my analysis of the book! My analysis was that this guy sucked hard and the point of the book was that even when people suck, colonization is bad. My TEACHER’S analysis (and the only analysis she allowed us to discuss) was that this guy was a good guy and the point of the book was to make us feel bad that a good guy was the victim of colonization. I don’t even think I need to unpack why that’s totally bullshit, y’all have reading comprehension skills lmao.

To this day I still bitch about this book and this unit to my friends who were in that class. Not that any media analysis should ever be considered “right” or “wrong,” but to be told I was wrong in my analysis when I so very clearly was not was infuriating.

[satorugojjo]

I’m just gonna say it, but I think current kids younger than 15 are almost incapable of dissecting anything with critical nuance. Because there is a HUGE difference to the 15 year olds BEFORE lockdown, and after. I’ve seen Gen Z teenagers on tiktok and tumblr have the most empathic, kind, amazingly supportive and intelligent opinions in 2020 who have now grown up and are in college absolutely killing it - they’ve gone into lockdown already having developed their emotional skills and come out of it with a lot more depth and growth. But YOU guys were 12 and younger when the pandemic started, you spent YEARS of it online without interacting with a wide variety of people and learning to read between the lines as you HAVE to in order to navigate the real world and peoples speech patterns and behaviours. You grew up alone in your house behind your screen, without being able to bond with classmates or friends, and most importantly, without anyone to temper your thoughts, or have rational and calm discussions in person. Half the teens I see on tiktok and tumblr NOW are so full of hate, so quick to put down and dismiss peoples choices, so quick to troll and voice really bizarrely conservative and ignorant opinions as if they’re entitled to do so, and so anti-empowerment and anti-ENJOYMENT in general. And I’m gonna be real with you and say it’s because of lockdown. It’s not entirely your fault bc y’all are still kids.

Your literature programs would have been cut, you’re just reading for the assignment, you’re not engaging in seminars and debates and classroom exercises the way you would in class, and all the while you’re just being increasingly exposed to sensationalist media that boils down complex and nuanced topics to a black and white, yes or no, 7 second hook. And it’s made you incapable of approaching anything with logic and empathy, because you just didn’t HAVE that the way everyone else did during their formative middle school puberty years. So now the moment you have a singular negative opinion of something, it’s all encompassing. There is no give, no flex, everyone is guilty until innocent. And why wouldn’t you think that? That’s what people have been doing online during the whole pandemic, cancelling people for 1 comment taken out of context, or being so quick to say something negative first instead of positive. You got comfortable behind your screen instead of being taught the consequences of saying shit things, and now when it comes to exploring all angles to a situation like you should be taught how to the way EVERYONE is, you take it at the most basic, surface, face value.

And when it now comes to fandom spaces where you have older fans in the same space as younger fans, there’s so many more instances where something will get an inordinate and undeserved amount of hate or hype based on a very surface level of understanding. Inherently, this isn’t a good or bad thing, it’s just a thing. What IS bad is when people come under someone’s obviously thought out and nuanced opinion to be like “you’re wrong for liking this bc (insert a completely unrelated logical fallacy of a reason)”. “If you like this book that happens to be a straight romance, you’re homophobic” IT DOESNT WORK THAT WAY AND IM SICK AND TIRED OF ARGUING WITH PEOPLE WHO NEVER BOTHERED TO DEVELOP READING COMPREHENSION SKILLS EVEN AFTER FINDING OUT THEY DON’T HAVE ANY.

Please for the love of GOD I am begging you guys to learn how to analyze literature. Like in an enforced curriculum at a high school level way. Please. YOU will be better off for it, and in turn the rest of us. This isn’t the new wave of boomer-esque hate against the kids. Gen Z is the goddamn future!!! This is a very specific, very VALID gripe, about a very small subset of kids who spent their formative years chronically online. And please! I am BEGGING teachers to recognize this and help their kids out to fix this. There is already a lot of hate in this world and we don’t need a new wave of people spewing hate under the guise of pseudointellectual liberalism because they don’t know how to see any deeper. This is one of the main reasons puritanism in the younger generation is exponentially on the rise! We’ve taken away the ability for them to form a fully informed opinion, and it’s now a self serving spiral. BREAK OUT OF IT, I AM PLEADING.

[bestworstcase]

I feel like many bad takes or bad analysis from certain crowds ultimately boil down to people being utterly inattentive and basically wanting to FEEL smart over actually BEING smart.

They like the idea of "show don't tell", but scorn the idea of actually putting in any effort to actually understand what they're being shown, especially if it contradicts what they want to believe.

Media only exists in their eyes to reinforce their own biases instead of challenging what they think, and anything that does so is an affront to their image of themselves.

taps the sign. (<- a tangent but i have very strong opinions regarding “show don’t tell,” to wit that as it is utilized memetically as both advice and criticism it is nonsense.)

i think you are ascribing egotism and small-mindedness to a phenomenon better explained by the simple fact that textual analysis is a difficult skill to learn and one that is, outside of specific disciplines to which it is a core function, very poorly taught. i benefitted a great deal from having an exceptional humanities teacher in high school who made it a priority to teach textual analysis and critical thinking skills above everything else, and it absolutely blew me away to get to college and discover that almost all of my peers—incredibly smart, creative, thoughtful people—wrote analytical essays on par with what i had written in middle school. none of them were stupid or arrogant or lazy [frankly many of them worked a hell of a lot harder on every essay than i did, because they were learning new skills while i practiced things i’d already been doing regularly for four years]; but they hadn’t ever been taught how to parse texts analytically, whereas i had, so there was a huge divide when we entered college which shrank as they built those skills. as with anything some people will find it easier to learn textual analysis than others but nobody is born knowing how to do it and short of studying it in college in some capacity you’re unlikely to be taught more than the bare minimum lies-to-children basics.

there’s also the secondary factor that some people enjoy textual analysis and some really don’t, in the same way that some people enjoy mathematics and others do not; people in the latter category are generally not going to be reading or watching stories they enjoy particularly deeply because that would make the experience an unpleasant chore, and that’s, like, fine? the vast majority of people read and watch things to have fun and certainly in the context of fandom the core motivation is enjoyment. there’s no one right way to enjoy a story. (that said, fandom as a whole does tend to be rather analytically lukewarm because the primary approach to the text is transformative rather than analytical and this, in combination with the tendency for fandom to bring non-analytical and analytical audiences into close contact, can cause some friction. in my experience this friction most often occurs along fault lines between fans whose engagement is driven by emotional connection to or identification with certain characters and fans who engage analytically with character as a narrative tool; i think there is a degree of mutual incomprehensibility between the two camps that tends to spark conflict when the two interact.)

all of this is compounded by—(thwacks the dead horse)—christian hegemony, which is the underlying cultural engine driving things like fandom purity culture and the rigidity of good/bad categorization of characters and implicit expectation that all stories are or should be morality plays, and so forth; this is an issue on both sides of the non-analytical/analytical divide and has less to do with individual arrogance than it does the hegemonic moral framework that underlies US culture generally and online fandom culture by extension because online fandom is extremely americanized. although i do think that this is also, if not THE root cause, then at least a significant factor behind the recent-ish rejection of subtext as ‘real’ (so to speak) and the proliferation of the attitude that a story that fails to overtly and clearly explain itself is poorly written; points at evangelical christianity in particular fostering the mindset that individual questioning and interpretation and extrapolation from scripture is suspect on the grounds that there is a singular right answer that you are told by church leadership, which at minimum does nothing to equip the people who grow up in evangelical churches to handle critical analysis or even more-than-superficial comprehension of any other text.

of course some people are disingenuous and arguing in bad faith—that is the bedrock of hatedom specifically and tends to be driven by a variety of factors of which latent or overt bigotry, bitterness over jossed theories, and strong group identification with the hatedom seem to be the most common—but that’s a really small (if vocal) minority compared to the number of people who either lack analytical skill or don’t enjoy analytical engagement or both but form strong opinions anyway (as people tend to do about things they really like, or really don’t like). i don’t think it’s useful or kind to presume that anyone with a staunchly weird or whacky take is treating a story they like as a vehicle for self-aggrandizement.

[cypric-rat-hyperfixation]

Things to do that make you feel like a leedle rat

Eat some peas and be like heh heh. pea fishing

Collect stuff. just stuff. Put it somewhere. Be like heh heh. hoarde

Bonus points if it's stuff you just find, such as rocks and nails n' shit

Drink water really fucking loud

Sniff shit

...by which I mean STUFF not. shit

Fuckinf cuddle. If you have anyone or anything to cuddle. Do it

Eat smol food

Practice good hygiene. Rats are always cleaning themselves! But you don't have to be that diligent about it

.... Just shower/bathe, brush your hair/teeth, and wear deodorant regularly-- generally keep yourself funky n' fresh

Be transgender

Cosplay as Bruno Madrigal. or simply as a wrat

Eat things rats often eat that you can also eat: fruits, vegetables, nuts, yogurt, etc. and be like heh heh. rat food. for me. a leedle rat

Make all of the rules

Go exploring

Watch the rat movies. The Jerma ones. And be like I am the giant rat. Also

brush your teeth like legendary toothbrush from Rat Movie 2: The Movie

Be active at night if you can. Wrats are ✨nocturnal✨

Art, rat art,, rart

Learn a new skill or two like the bright little wrat you are

Get tickled or play hide-n-seek, games well-loved by rats

Punk stuff, rats are hella punk

Have absolutely no thoughts head empty, play the Wii theme in your head instead of thinking

Pee

Stim when you're happy

Just be a goddamn goofball bro rats are so fucking weird and so are you you ✨wrat✨

Drink lots and lots of water so you piss all the time. like a leedle rat

Bang out the tunes

Nibble your foods!

Movie night lineup........... Ratatouille, Encanto, Rat Movie: Mystery of the Mayan Treasure, Rat Movie 2: The Movie, Flushed Away, Ratatoing, The Secret of NIMH,

Sleeb

Make funny noises

Sing some rat songs (Rät by Penelope Scott, We Don't Talk About Bruno, rat songs from Jerma's rat movies)

Curl up when you sleep, in a sort of Rat Wheel

Take a shit

Denounce h*rry p*tter and its maker once and for all. No merch, no piracy, no consumption.

Engage in mutual aid. Rats are highly social animals and will forego chocolate in order to save another rat!

Socialize to the extent of your comfort

Nest

Cook in fremch

Make rat art-- draw, sculpt, crochet, etc

Drive around! Rats can be taught the drive tiny cars

Watch videos of rats!

Dig. Sandbox, mud on the side of the road, bin of stuffed animals, drawer of odds and ends, whatever you.. dig

Keep that diet varied to the best of your ability!

Stim via chewing, like with chewelry or gum n' shit. Rats gotta chew often to keep their perpetually growing teefs little, so you can too!

Go for a phucking swim

Engage in prosocial behaviors with your "mischief" (friends, family, community)

Have prosocial beliefs (pro-unions, gay rights, antiracism, equity)

Pee

Have smol toys and stim tools

Fit in some "you" time for self-care and rest!!!

Be teeny

Be gay 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

*squeak squeak*

Sway your head or body gently from side-to-side like a pink-eyed wrat trying to see

Look up rat information and learn all about them!

Eat ratatouille

When eating, turn the food this way and that way to find the best spot for the first bite, like leedle wrats do

Celebrate your birthday with cake and ice cream (as applicable & with any substitutes needed)

Do some fine motor activities to make you feel Teeny

Pet some rats or rat plushies

Support queer people

Pirate some media! :D Stealing from the rich is good and you should do it

Play games that have rats-- The Ratchelor, Dishonored, Rat Simulator, old Ratatouille games, Pokemon, Wizard101, Elder Scrolls, DnD, Minecraft rat mod, Wolvden, Dragon City, Okami, Cell to Singularity, & so many more

Pee

Make a ratsona or rat OCs! Use picrews as inspiration if you need

Get yourself. a little hole... spend time in it.......... Cozy little nests are a critical component for a healthy rat. but more importantly: for a healthy autism!!! You might construct a teeny fort out of a single chair, pitch a smol tent, or just hide away in your bedroom closet for a bit. Just gotta be enclosed, smol enough to be cozy, big enough to not make you feel cramped/cooped/claustrophobic, quiet, comforbl for you 💞

[rosemarydisaster]

I'm seeing a lot of people start the shipping really hard and, all jokes aside, don't?? We've only had 3 episodes thus far and you need a lot more time to properly gage the difference between "pals being pals" "found family" and "lovers". Don't get me wrong, I do have a lot of ships and headcanons already but I'm not kidding myself into believing I hold the absolute truth.

I'll be discussing Queerbaiting, LGBTQ+ rep, and Critical role campaigns 1 to 3 so there might be Spoilers below. For new fans and veterans alike, these are my reflections upon having lived through this bullshit plenty of times before. Feel free to disagree, but please do so respectfully.

The one I've seen the most is Laudna and Imogen being already a canon couple, since they've known each other for years. I just want to say that I ship it but also, maybe that's not what they're going for. Laudna is presumably much older than Imogen, so their relationship could be "surrogate daughter/weird mother I found in the trash can". I can see it from both points (or even just a "she's like a sister to me"), with the "my girl" comment and Laudna being so proud of Imogen.

Most people will take a look at Imogen and Laudna and ship them without being pricks about it. But sadly, I feel like fandom spaces have become really hostile towards shipping, specially what's canon and what's baiting. As an ace+aro person, I can confidently say that you can have really intense platonic relationship too without it being "bait".

What I'm trying to say is, and please don't cringe, manage your expectations. I don't mean it in a dismissive way, but please understand that just because something seems obvious to you, it doesn't mean those were the cast's intentions. Accusing them of Queerbaiting just because they don't match the projection you've made of their relationship is a bit weird.

I swear I'm not trying to be patronizing or invalidate your perception of the show. I've just seen the same mistake again and again (specially in this fandom) and I would love to see us grow from it. Remember we are only 3 episodes in, if you really have super strong feelings about a thing (that has not been stated by the cast) being canon, maybe rethink it.

Queerbaiting is a weird subject with a lot of grey area, but please let's remember that one of the main components is "maliciously hinting at a main character being LGBTQ+ just to not have any representation at all (or just a really minor character) as not to lose the homophobic audience".

This can't be true for Critical role since Vax, Tary, Beau, Yasha, Caduceus, Molly, Ashton and F.C.G. are very openly queer. Even if you don't take Caleb into account because some people really didn't get him, that's still at least two openly LGBTQ+ characters per campaign. They clearly are not trying to keep the homophobic part of the fan base.

And of course, please don't interpret this post as "CR cast can't make mistakes and good intentions is all that matters so we should forgive them any mistakes". I think the people who explained to Matt and Liam that the Shadowgast epilogue might not have been as clear as they thought it was were right on the money. Engaging with media critically also means being able to properly articulate why some representation falls flat for you. I didn't even had that much of a problem with the Shadowgast thing but I really appreciated reading other fans perspectives and getting to see their point. Constructive Criticism is what taught Matt that "they/them" where better than "it" for a nonbinary character, amongst other things.

Conclusion: take a step back before unleashing hell it self upon the cast to reflect whether your expectations (realistic or not) may have gotten in the way of your judgement.

[horrible-exorcism]

Dehumanization in Otome Isekai: Are Evil Women Born Evil or Made Evil?

A popular trend in Otome Isekai right now, or rather, common trend is the dehumanization of characters, particularly villains, and particularly... female villains.

Now, that is not to say that a lot of male characters aren’t dehumanized, but I feel there is a clear difference between a man who acts on his sexual desire and need for power to rein in a woman as is commonly seen and... a woman who is cruel for the sake of needing an alpha b*tch villainess (like, a “true” villainess but that is a conversation for another time). Because one is rooted in a pattern commonly seen irl in abuse relationships and misogyny built from upon centuries ago and the other one is a rare form of denial for any layer of depth to female characters. Female villainesses (antagonists) are time and time again denied any form of depth by the author, mainly because authors (authoresses?) want YOU, the audience, to hate the villainess as much as possible, but in doing so, perpetuates a... weird trope. The real question is: should the trope be a common thing? 

There’s absolutely no question that everyone has their different tastes, but these one-dimensional female antagonists feel tasteless, especially in the face of their true potential. Take Mielle from The Villainess Turns the Hourglass, for example. She’s probably the worst of the dehumanized-antagonist syndrome (as I like to call it) because it’s revealed that she doesn’t hate Aria simply for being a commoner, but it’s more of a psychopathy-narcissism thing. 

There’s an important distinction to made here: Rather than Mielle being made evil by growing up with these horrible ideals, learning them and cultivating them into bad behaviors, Mielle was just born evil. But the thing is, Mielle being born evil weakens the narrative a LOT, especially in the face of themes such as classism and corruption of wealth and whatnot. 

Is it... misogynist to have your women born evil? 

Now, there IS a disconnect from real life, I have to mention. Female Psychopaths are, obviously, a real thing, but to what point does media have to abuse the stereotypes of these women to make their female antagonists? And the truth is, even PSYCOPATHIC WOMEN irl are, indeed, human. If you look at the greatest female villains, yes, they display traits of narcissism, but the writers of those media (Elena from Little Fires Everywhere, Azula from ATLA, etc.) make sure that they portray ALL sides of these women, making sure YOU understand that they weren’t born evil. They are just humans who do evil things, strayed from the path, and honestly? It’s FINE to have evil women in media, to have female antagonists, but we have to ask... is it FINE to have your women evil with no other depth to them, to have your women cruel because they were born to be cruel, and have women serve no other purpose than to make YOUR female protagonist look better?

Is that all evil women are cut out to be?

As an author/authoress, I believe that people have the right to control their own narrative, to make characters that stand for something. I really cannot see why women HAVE to be born evil, even giving them a simple motive does wonders. Mielle didn’t HAVE to be born evil, she could’ve represented an extreme of aristocrats, shown that she was taught horrible ideals, and in the end, it’s FINE because we understand that perpetuating those horrible ideals still means she has to be taken down. It is fine to humanize your female antagonists, or any antagonists, because if you HAVE to dehumanize your antagonists to make the audience hate them, then you might want to think twice about how engaging your media really is.

I understand Otome Isekai is said to be a “low-brow” type of genre, much like YA romance novels, but I think it is sad to be watching all this wasted potential go down the drain. It is wrong to feel like Otome Isekai is a progressive feminist-type genre when tropes like these still linger around the most popular and hailed novels, and I absolutely LOVE Otome Isekai but I think it is also important to view some of its tropes with a more critical eye. I hope any rising OI enthusiasts who are writing their own novels can think twice before making another one-dimensional two-faced bitch with no backstory, no real personality beyond “cruel”, no nothing.

As someone who often adores villain/villainesses characters, isn’t it ironic that we have to dehumanize actual villainesses to make our female protagonists seem more human?

[c-is-for-circinate]

So here’s the thing:  I really, honestly do not get the appeal in Widojest.  I don’t entirely see the appeal in Caleb Widogast.  And I’m okay with that; I have other faves who I pay more attention to; I get to do that, because my show is 3-5 hours long every goddamn week that it airs and there is plenty of time for literally everyone.  And I do not have to be a Caleb stan to understand at a really fundamental level that, hey, even if he isn’t important to me?  He is very clearly very important to a lot of actual real-live people.

There will always, always be stories that aren’t for you.  Maybe they just don’t speak to you at all.  Maybe they hit buttons in your brain that remind you of real hurts.  It’s always going to happen.  In a perfect world, with perfect representation where there are stories for you everywhere, there will still be stories that aren’t.

And it hurts, I know it does, when you feel like the story you want for you doesn’t exist anywhere, but here’s one more story that isn’t it.  It hurts when there’s a story that you thought was for you and then it turns out not to care about you at all.  There should be more stories for all of us, especially the stories that feel like they’re not getting told.

That is a real, valid pain.  We all clear on that?

Good.  Because this next part is also absolutely true:

The story that is not for you is very important to someone else.  And particularly in fandom spaces, there is a very good chance that the someone else in question has experienced marginalization on the basis of gender, sexuality, race, disability, mental illness, or general trauma.

The story that is not for you has worth.

People who find worth in stories that are not for you--even if your story is underrepresented and their story really has been told one hundred billion times before, even then--ARE NOT INHERENTLY BAD PEOPLE for finding worth in those stories.

There’s this extra dimension to this particular ship war, where I think a lot of Beaujester shippers are so angry not because of what’s actually happened, but because of what years of pattern recognition has taught them (taught us?) must inevitably be coming next.  When a leading man in a fantasy series, on an arc of learning to better himself and maybe even value or forgive himself, repeatedly expresses unrequited love for a girl who he believes is too good for him, the narrative will give her to him in the end.  This is a pattern and it’s real and its existence hurts, outside of Widojest, just in general in the world.

And on one hand: that has not happened yet with Widojest, and there is a very good chance, for a million reasons, that it won’t!  And on the other hand: even if it did happen, that would not be an excuse for violent or abusive behavior, or to dismiss the worth that story might have to other people!  And on the third hand: yes, I totally see why it feels like that’s the trope being invoked here, and why that is scary, and why it hurts!

We know about Caleb’s feelings in this one specific way and we don’t know about Jester’s.  In theory that means that Jester’s feelings could be ANYTHING, and this could go ANYWHERE, and of course Caleb and Liam would respect Jester and Laura’s ‘no’, and there is plenty of agency all around and that’s great.  In practice, it can feel like another reminder of that old trope, where the male lead character’s emotions are given to the audience like something important, and the female lead character’s feelings are generally passed off as vague platonic affection until the final romantic reveal, and we have to extrapolate what was going through her head the whole time.

We know that Critical Role cares about representation and queer visibility, and without a network to fight, they get to make the show as gay as they want.  In theory this means that we can trust them to give us the rep we’re craving.  In practice, we worry, because in an ad-libbed show where you don’t have to plan ahead or deliberately fight for representation, it’s easy to accidentally slip into old familiar patterns and biases without even noticing they’re there.

We know that Laura’s agency and Jester’s agency matter here, that of course it’s not just about Caleb, and in theory that should make ANY romantic ending better and good and right and fine, but in practice--well, what does it mean, when you’ve got agency over a story, and use it to choose to tell what feels like the same old story all over again?

And right, let me say it again: none of this has happened yet.  QUITE LIKELY NONE OF IT EVER WILL.  We don’t know!!!  Not even the players know!!!

Which, maybe that’s the scariest thing of all.  When I’m watching a scripted show, I usually know what to expect out of the formula.  I know when a show is going to be queerbaity and then quit gay chicken at the last second.  I expect it.  I can feel out how trustworthy the showrunners are in a few episodes, and while sometimes there’s a long slow decline or a short sharp surprise, after 20-30 years of media engagement, I know what I’m going to get.

I suspect that CR feels like it should be more “trustworthy,” to many Beaujester shippers, in terms of providing the kind of story they’re craving--but it’s so hard to know for sure.  It’s so hard to know whether to brace for disappointment, or be resigned, or ragequit and be done with it, or most terrifyingly at all, to be hopeful.

It’s hard.  I do get that it’s hard.

And it’s really easy, isn’t it, to go on twitter and tumblr and into the comments sections on critrole.com and fuck knows where else, I’m assuming there’s a Discord somewhere that I’m not cool enough to know about, and be furious.  To be mean.  To blame the fear of not getting the story that will mean something to me, again, on anyone else.  To make fucking death threats, I don’t even know why that seems acceptable or easy to anyone, but it’s just words typed on a keyboard, so yeah, I guess it’s easy.

Do not fucking do that!  Don’t do it!  Whether you identify with everything I’ve said here or you have a completely different reason to be full of rage and fury, don’t do the furious threats thing!  Just don’t!  That, also, is easy!!!  And doing absolutely nothing is at least as effective as being violently angry at strangers on the internet, so it has that going for it as well.

There are a lot of feelings to be had here, and I’m sure not going to sum them all up or solve the problem of representation in fiction in one tumblr post, but maybe we can change this discussion a little.  Maybe we can redirect.

I started this post by saying that I’m not the world’s biggest Caleb fan.  I don’t mind him, but his story doesn’t particularly speak to me.  I don’t love the amount of space he takes up in the ongoing fandom discussion.  I particularly don’t love that every single time he comes up, the volume of discussion doubles because of people vociferously objecting to every single thing about him.

So I find the parts of the story that are for me.  I let the people who want to have Caleb discussions have their Caleb discussions, because they are enjoying a thing they like and I’m glad for him, and then I host a discussion about Beau or Fjord or Caduceus or whoever, because I WANT TO HAVE FUN TOO.  I am watching this show because it is full to the brim with things I like and have thoughts about.  There is SO MUCH OF THAT TO GO AROUND.

[ardenttheories]

Homestuck's always been antagonistic and insensitive, but I don't recall seeing any of you try to dox Hussie? But please, continue to rationalise how cyberbullying lgbt people for not being nice enough and having opinions about a fictional character you disagree with puts you in the right. A story doesn't go the way you'd like and this is how you respond? You COULD have just not bothered reading it instead of CHOOSING to make your online life about something you hate like a toxic weirdo.

Hi, Kate. I’m so glad you could find my blog. (Edit: that was a joke. Apparently, some anons find it impossible to tell that I don’t actually think you’re Kate). It’s clear to me that you didn’t take the time to read through any of the content that’s actually on here, since you’re throwing around rather wild accusations, so let me take this down step by step.

Homestuck has only rarely been antagonistic and insensitive. Things like the Alpha Trolls - which were clear criticisms of fandom culture - were relatively few and far between, and when we complained about them, they actually stopped. Remind me, for instance, how relevant the Alpha Trolls were to the plot? How long they stayed as mockeries towards the fandom? Yeah, not long. I actually have talked about this before on the blog - alongside other things I thought were negative towards the fandom from the original comic - but the difference here is that... in the entirety of Homestuck, these things were outliers and inconsistencies. They stuck out because they were in stark contrast to the otherwise wonderfully handled content Homestuck went over.

For instance, Homesuck is critical of abuse - especially in terms of relationships. We see through a critical lense the shit normalisation of parental abuse can do to a child - with actual talk of triggers and of the mental and emotional scarring left behind, and the complexities of the child’s feelings towards the parent’s death through Dave - and we see how self destructive relationships can be, how harmful they are, and how hard it can be to leave them - such as Terezi’s very toxic blackrom with Gamzee, which was always portrayed as something negative and harmful especially with how worried Karkat was for her and how withdrawn she became during its run, and Dirk’s relationship with Jake, which goes very much over how communication can cause a deterioration in romantic relationships especially when the two participants have conflicting mental illnesses. 

It also goes over how men, though they can be mired in toxic masculinity, can choose to be good. How sometimes we’re not born as good people, but we can become good people through the love we have for the people around us, through frequent attempts to check what we’re doing, through the sheer willpower to be good. Dirk’s entire arc, knowing that he could very easily become Bro but deciding he doesn’t want to be, that it’s something he wants to work on, is so important and incredibly powerful. Mental illness in men is often just given as an excuse to make them violent with no attempts at betterment - so Dirk actually existed as proof that you don’t have to be that stereotype. 

In contrast, Homestuck^2 completely uncritically gave Jade, who was cis, a dog dick, made her, a bisexual woman, a sex maniac and the yaoi “woman who gets in the way of the gays” trope, made her a cheater and someone who forced her partner into the relationship to begin with, and made her a neglectful mother after having cheated with her best lesbian friend in something that has incredible recall to just about every futanari video ever - and they tried to claim that this was good representation of trans women, actually, and that the only reason we didn’t like it is that Jade is “a woman” who “has sex”.

Likewise completely uncritically, they made Gamzee, an anti-black stereotype, enter a relationship with Jane, a fascist, and then made the entire thing into a cuck joke wherein Jake being frequently drunk and sexually assaulted was funny because he wasn’t “man enough”. They then forced him to go back to his abuser after he left her in a scene that read very much like, “ridiculous man thinks woman is abusing him, go back and do your manly job”. 

This, of course, doesn’t even go into the travesty that is any form of trans representation in the comic. Roxy, a trans man, is barely even focused on as trans; they make no attempt to enforce in the fandom that he’s a trans man the way they do that June is a trans woman, and even then, they seem to think that just saying someone is a trans woman is actually good representation. Not, like, bringing it into the comic - just saying that it’s a thing. And of course, that’s not even going into the completely uncritical lense they have of Vriska, wherein her being a trans woman completely frees her of any and all blame for the past abuses she has comitted, and once again she becomes an amazing character to save the day without a single flaw - which in turn inherently associates trans women with abuse apologism, abusers, and the ideology that just because we’re trans we can get away with anything scott free. 

I honestly cannot think of one instance of good and genuine representation in Homesuck^2, nor can I think of any scene where negative content was actually treated as the negative thing it actually is. There’s no critical lense at all, not like we have in Homestuck; there’s just no fucking comparison. And this isn’t a one-off situation, either. Whereas Homestuck does do fuck ups - isn’t perfect - in between the otherwise brilliant content, Homestuck^2 is just founded upon these horrific takes. There’s almost no good content in between, and what is left is a slog to get through when surrounded by the thick slurry of shit that compromises futa Jade, abuse apologism Vriska, and victim blaming Jake. 

Of course, we didn’t “doxx” Hussie. Hussie actually listened to our complaints, for the most part, and worked with us to create something that worked well. The way Homestuck^2 was touted to work. You know, since it was meant to be written with the fandom in mind, influenced by the things we suggest and react to. We went into Homestuck^2 with the explicit idea that we were going to be listened to and taken into consideration when it was being written - the way we were with old Homestuck. I’m very sorry to say that, when you make these expectations, people are going to be a titchy bit upset when you then commandeer the entire thing and exclude the fandom from any of the process that you said they were going to be part of.

Additionally, it’s rather funny, isn’t it, that what you call doxxing is actually just people upset with how triggering content is being handled, and going to the people who actually wrote the content in order to voice their complaints? It’s almost as if social media exists to allow this communication between reader and author, which is a fundamental thing you’ll learn in any creative writing course, such as the one I’m on currently, wherein you’re actually taught how to respond to social media and to build up your image with your fans. 

Homestuck^2 is an ongoing piece of media. We’re well aware that we have a potential to change these uncritical takes and the horrific way they’re being handled if the writers will just listen to genuine criticism. This is, frankly, no different to the people who go to J. K. Rowling’s Twitter to tell her how harmful her transphobic comments are; because if she believes these things, they will work their way into her texts and will perpetuate harmful ideologies. 

The literal same thing is happening in Homestuck^2 - again, such as futa Jade, which normalises the point of view that bisexuals are cheaters and completely trivialises what it means to be trans, or Gamzee, which perpetuates just about every anti-black stereotype possible. Media does have a very powerful impact on what people see in the real world. This is why, for instance, positive black characters are so important in media; if they’re always portrayed as villains, then people will see real world black people as villains as the ideology is perpetuated to the point of fact. This is especially true if the people already believe in the ideology.

Fiction is one of the best ways that we can counteract this cycle. If you make a character that they like, and they happen to be positive representation, and then they watch more media that is likewise positive representation, it’s more likely to stick that these positive representations are the actual experiences of minority groups. Also? It’s important TO those minority groups. A black person, especially right now, doesn’t want to see an anti-black stereotype fuck a fascist, engage in sexual assult, and then enact pedophilia - only to die at the hands of a hero and be laughed at for the death. Surprisingly, shit like this is why we need to tell the writers that what they’re doing is harmful, that they’re perpetuating phobic ideologies, and that we need better representation - especially in a comic that is this widely read, and also has a very large minor fanbase. 

I shouldn’t need to explain why exposing minors to anti-black stereotypes, transphobic, homophobic, biphobic, abuse apologism, victim blaming, and the trivialisation of rape and sexual assault (especially towards men), might be a federal fucking issue. 

So, no, we’re not actually cyberbullying LGBT+ people. We’re trying to hold shitty writers accountable for the incredibly toxic and harmful ideologies they’re forcing into a text that has always been written with critical thought in mind. 

I should also point out how funny it is that you’re focusing on how some of the writers are LGBT+ - as if we’re not? I’m trans, I’m gay, and I’m ace. Yes, I can actually be these things and absolutely furious that a trans women is writing some of the most transphobic shit I’ve seen in a while into characters she then claims to be completely free of blame. We can be furious that people within our own community are enforcing negative stereotypes.

Being LGBT+ does not make them free from blame. We cannot give them a free pass to be racist, to be transphobic, to be homophobic, biphobic, to be abuse apologists, just because they’re LGBT+. Not only because that’s just a terrible fucking idea to begin with, but because it also reflects so, so badly on the community as a whole. As if being part of the community instantly means that you can do no wrong? As if there can be no toxicity within our own community, despite the fact that there very much is and it is still an issue to this day?

That is such an issue, one of the biggest issues even shown just in Vriska and the way Kate handles her as a whole - and, once again, is WHY we need to get them looking at this shit more critically. This view that LGBT+ people can do no wrong and cannot be criticised is shoved into Homestuck^2 and, once again, perpetuates the ideology. This isn’t something to be proud of. This isn’t something that’s actually okay.

Also, your point that the writers aren’t nice enough and that we disagree on fictional characters - well, I’ve already been over the second part. But for the first part, I would like to remind you that they aren’t just random LGBT+ people on the internet that we’re going to because we think their takes are a little shitty. They’re actual writers working on a piece of media. They are official content creators. 

Again, one of the first things you learn on any creative writing course is that when you become a writer, you gain a significant amount of responsibility for your interactions with the fandom. This is something that you genuinely have to expect, and if you don’t, then, unfortunately you just don’t know what it means to write something that thousands of people have a potential to read. As a writer, it is your responsibility to portray your image online; it is your responsibility to engage with the fans in a meaningful way; it is your responsibility to not cause drama and to listen when criticism is brought up, to have genuine discussion and not to perpetuate hatred - especially towards your own fanbase.

Consider, for instance, the way I’m talking to you right now. This is the sort of tone that someone should take when talking to a fan about genuine criticism. When things are brought up, you go over them step by step, you listen, you write back - you don’t go on a flurry of “fuck yous” to a minor who asked you why your team didn’t post anything about the BLM movement on the official Twitter, and you definitely don’t respond to every comment with genuine criticism with the word “pigshit”. You almost definitely don’t tell your trans masculine and masculine-aligned nonbinary fans that their opinions don’t matter.

As a writer, Kate and the rest of the team have a responsibility with their interactions with their fans. They aren’t just normal fandom voices anymore; they’re official fandom voices, voices that have more weight behind them than anyone else. They’re who people are going to turn to when it comes to anything regarding Homestuck^2. Their words now reflect literally everything about Homestuck^2, the future of Homestuck as an expanded universe, and the opinions of the group as a whole. They have to be careful with what they say. They have to be held to the same standards as industry voices because that’s essentially what they are - especially now that Homestuck is something you pay for. 

Also, this isn’t a point of the story not going the way I want. This is a point of many of people in the fandom being upset with how content is being handled, upset that their voices are being shut down, upset that triggering content is being laughed at or used flippantly and without care or respect. This is people being upset that trigger warnings were removed specifically to make the comic unsafe for them as a punishment for daring to say that something was wrong. This is people being upset that a piece of media that used to be so fucking good at portraying sensitive content in a critical light, that used to be so good at normalising LGBT+ identities and healthy representations of those identities, has suddenly turned to this. 

The story can go whatever way it wants - and frankly, that’s fine be my. What isn’t fine is that content is being used specifically to hurt and to incite.

And, of course, that final piece; nothing will improve if we don’t say that it’s wrong to begin with. Someone needs to voice the complaints of the fanbase, othrewise these toxic ideologies are going to go unchecked. One of the biggest things I’ve come to understand while making these posts is that a significant portion of the fandom feels isolated in their hurt; they don’t think other people feel the same way they do, and several people have mentioned feeling like they were going crazy because they were upset with things that the text and writers are normalising. It’s so important to make sure that these people know they’re not alone. It’s so important to make sure that our voices are heard. It’s so important to try and create critical discussion and debate over something that so many people still fucking love. 

The thing is, I don’t hate Homestuck^2. I actually really, desperately wish I could enjoy it. I wish I could read through it and theorise, could go in depth about how amazing the characters are, could write long and extensive posts on how creative and engaging it is - could even just go on about how interesting the Meat-Candy divide is, and all the points they’re trying to make about canonicity. But I genuinely fucking can’t. There is just so, so much wrong in the text that is completely unrelated to plot and to the overarching Point that makes it impossible for me to read, to want to read, to try to encourage other people to read. They’re things that literally don’t need to be in there, either; stereotypes and toxic ideologies and uncritical or badly handled sensitive topics that could be rectified so, so easily. 

Homestuck^2 could be amazing for a lot of the fandom. It could be something that we all rally around the same way we did for the original comic. For for a lot of people, it has ruined their fandom experience, has ruined their desire to want to read anything more to do with Homestuck, and has caused a significant portion of the fandom to just drop out entirely. That in and of itself should be a sign that this isn’t just a little fandom drama. That this is something much bigger and much more serious that, just maybe, needs to be looked into, talked about, understood - and, potentially, changed. 

[irhinoceri]

I’ve seen a lot of fanfiction vs original fiction discourse in the past couple months on tumblr and I feel like there’s a lot of talk about fanfiction as a starting point, or the be-all-end-all, but no one talks about it as something to get into after having  already written original fiction. I know I’m not the only one who has done this... but it’s strange that it’s almost never talked about in these discussions.

I read voraciously and wrote avidly as a child/teenager and while my writing was undoubtedly derivative of whatever I was reading at the time, none of it was actually fanfiction. It was squarely in the realm of original work. I’ve had a fraught relationship with writing since, but have managed to complete at least first drafts of several novel length works, and in my early twenties (mid 2000s) I was highkey into “web fiction” which is just making a blog (usually a wordpress site) to post original work online, a la fanfiction. I went so far as to self-publish a novel via Lulu so that anyone who wanted to read it in a traditional way (paperback book) rather than via chapters posted via wordpress could do so.

I didn’t have any self-delusion that this made me a legitimate published author, but I still never wrote fanfiction and I looked down on it. I looked down on it far more harshly than a lot of harshest fanfic-critical posts I’ve seen on tumblr lately. The only thing close to fanfiction I would write was parody, because I’d never write anything serious that wasn’t original and that I couldn’t claim total ownership over. The idea of anyone in the hypothetical future writing fanfic of MY characters was awful to me and I would have wholeheartedly agreed with George R.R. Martin’s anti-fanfic stance, if I knew who GRRM was at the time.

In short, I was proud of my originality even though I knew nothing I had written was good enough to pursue traditional publication. I took inspiration from others, as I was aware no man is an island and there’s nothing truly new under the sun, etc. etc. etc. but I firmly believed that you should at least file off the serial numbers so you’re not insulting original creators by going against their intentions for their creative work to change or “fix” it. The popular fandom attitude that fanon can improve upon original work was just ridiculous to me. You either liked a work or you didn’t, there was no in between where you liked bits and pieces of canon and threw out the rest.

It wasn’t until 4 years ago that I set aside my pride enough to try writing a serious work of fanfiction, to engage with the idea that you could love a thing and still want to imagine it a different way, and to actually look into reading what other people were publishing on fanfiction.net and Ao3, rather than treating fanfic as an untouchable thing that would forever tarnish me.

The catalyst for this was that I wanted to read and write Padme Lives! fiction that imagined Star Wars without having to knock Padme off at the end of RotS. I’d seen RotS four times in theatres and many more times since, but always hated that Padme had to die at the end, and after TFA came out and there was a Star Wars revival, it rekindled my SW love that began with Attack of the Clones in 2002.

That’s it. I finally decided that I wanted Padme to live enough to write fic where she was alive or seek out other fic people had written about her being alive, despite everything. I was delighted to find entire novels set in a world where Anakin didn’t fall to the Dark Side at all, or repented in the nick of time, or other different ways for the story to unfold. I discovered that Vaderdala was an actual thing people thought was at all theoretically possible. I finally understood why people wrote fanfic. I was 31 years old.

I’ve written maybe about 500k words of fanfiction since 2016 but I’m still pretty sure the collective word count of all my original fiction since childhood still vastly eclipses that. I wrote a lot, guys. I was a homeschooled child who was largely left to my own devices (i.e. self-taught) and I had nothing in the world to do except milk goats, play in the woods, and read/write. You can get a lot of writing done when you’ve got nothing else.

So anyway.

I see people talking about this in reverse, how so many authors use fanfic and as a stepping stone towards originality, but I rarely see anyone talk about discovering the merit of fanfiction and the joy of writing it later on.

I had my reasons for starting to write fanfic after roughly 25 years of only writing original fiction, besides just wanting Padme to live. I won’t get into all of it here, but I graduated from college at the end of 2015 with a creative writing degree and haven’t written any original fiction since.

Suffice it is to say that I really admire people who brave the traditional publishing world and go out there and try to get published, get paid, to be a legitimate Author of Original Published Works. It takes a certain kind of courage to do that. The world would be a worse place if all writers just wrote fanfic. More people should be discovering new authors and stories, and consuming media that isn’t made by committee under the watchful eye of a corporation. People who have new ideas, who have something to say to the world that is totally original and isn’t just a revamp of licensed work should absolutely be doing that. And we should be celebrating and supporting them.

But if that’s not in the cards for you, fanfic can be very important. Fanfiction can be a life-saver.

I’m glad that fanfiction gives me a way to still write. I already know what it’s like to write original fiction. I don’t need to use fanfic as a stepping stone to anything, but that doesn’t mean I’m not serious about it in my own way. Letting go of the need to be profound and original (or publishable) is behind me, personally, but I still do care about the quality of the work I put out.

I just wonder how many other writers who have chosen fanfic as their main outlet feel that way? I.E. it’s not a vehicle to one day write your own original work because you’ve Been There and Done That.

[nettworkk]

Showcase Your True Potential: How skill sharing can shape thousands of lives

Joe Yakeen Vinitha | Mentor & Business Coach

The first time I heard the word ‘trading-positions’ was during one of my mastermind sessions with enthusiastic entrepreneurs. One of the participants gave an example which used this word and I was like what… But I did not forget to learn that from her and now I do trading!

 While doing all the research, tips & trick of trading, I realized I was becoming a part of a much larger, much more humane community of sharing skills with anybody who wanted to learn just in an attempt to make their lives better. In a way to connect people through their interests on a similar ground, the difference being one person is already adept at the particular field and the others just interested to learn.

To be honest, the concept of sharing skills is not something alien. We have all grown up with it. Take every mother who has taught her child to cook or every father who helped his kid with their homework. Thanks to the internet, skill sharing has become even more popular, allowing people to connect online and benefit from a person and their skillset even though they are physically miles apart.

 As Moses de Maimon, a Jewish philosopher, better known as Maimonides, says: “Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”

 Here's some more information on how skill sharing works, and most importantly, how it can benefit you, your career, and most importantly, the not so privileged.

 WHAT IS SKILL SHARING?

Skill sharing to put it in absolute layman terms is when people share their skills with others. While it can happen in a formal setting – like a classroom – it can also occur casually at meetups, community centres, and even in people's homes.

 For example, if you may be a freelance graphic designer who wants to learn social media marketing, you can agree to exchange design lessons for a tutorial in an online marketing strategy. Or, if you are a project manager looking to increase your web knowledge, you might take an online or in-person coding course.

WHY YOU NEED SKILL SHARING IN THE FIRST PLACE?

 Every person possesses a separate skill set which makes him unique. But the power of it is not keeping it confined, it's in sharing it. Call that friend who is weak in your favourite subject and help him out. Skill sharing is how we grow stronger as a team.

 It is said the strength of your team is the strength of its weakest person. So why not help them grow? There is only so much we can grow as individuals. Every sector in our lives we need a team to grow. Starting from our family, our primary and secondary education to our peer group and work life. Whether formal or informal, any successful project, be it big or small, has one thing at its core: effective collaboration,   and   you   cannot   achieve   that without knowledge sharing.

 “In our research on knowledge transfer, we have seen companies greatly disadvantaged, if not crippled, by knowledge loss. Certainly, some expert knowledge may be outdated or irrelevant by the time its possessors are eligible for retirement, but not the skills, know-how, and capabilities that underlie critical operations — both routine and innovative. Organizations cannot afford to lose these deep smarts” says Dorothy Leonard, the William J. Abernathy Professor of Business Administration Emerita at Harvard Business School.

 Here are 10 BENEFITS that you can get from sharing your knowledge:

 1.  It helps you grow

As Claudio Fernández-Aráoz put it, “The question is not whether your company’s employees and leaders have the right skills; it’s whether they have the potential to learn new ones”. We can only accomplish a certain number of goals with a limited skill set. But once we start learning new skills the opportunities for us are endless. They say you could learn something from everybody in your life. Let us make sure we actually do!

2.  It helps you stay motivated

Even among peers, skill sharing can play an important role to motivate you to get better at your skills and try to acquire new ones. Seeing your peers showcase their skills pushes you forward in healthy competition as well as a team effort for all of you to develop on your skills. We are all achievers on the inside. Sharing knowledge practices pushes you to become better at what you do while driving you at the same time to contribute with your own insights.

 3.Getting top talent access

“If you’re the smartest person in the room, then you’re in the wrong room” the saying goes. Knowledge sharing helps you get feedback and help with your projects from those more skilled or with a different set of competences. You can always reach out to your peers – you’ll be amazed at what they can teach you in no time. Not to mention the access to upper management expertise!

4.Recognition

So many recent studies underline the importance of recognition at work – it is one of the most powerful motivators and will highly contribute to both employee retention and engagement. Sharing your knowledge with others will give your talents more exposure, thus giving the people you interact with the opportunity to identify you as a valuable expert. Helping others can help you build your reputation. And that is a valuable asset!

    5.Generating new ideas

They say two heads think better than one. When different skills and experiences collide, eye- opening ideas and solutions emerge. The creative energy of brainstorming can generate faster and more relevant solutions to your current assignments, supporting you in successfully achieving your tasks. Tribal knowledge FTW!

6.Future leaders’ discovery

Sharing knowledge can be a great tool for everyone to PR themselves. All you need to do is to be permanently connected to the hot business topics and offer your expertise every time you can. When people are open to prove their value through their competence, it’s easier to notice the ones likely to organize people and to take initiative. The leaders of tomorrow are among those.

7.Limiting the skill gap

Your team is as strong as its weakest member. By sharing knowledge and talking about certain decisions and procedures, the new guys or juniors could easily acquire new sets of skills. Create an environment where everybody is encouraged to ask questions and help professionals in all your locations and job positions stay updated with the latest information in their field.

      8.Team cementing and silo breaking

Working as a team gives employees a sense of belonging. When employees, teams, and leaders share ideas and resources with each other, the feeling that they pursue a common goal becomes authentic. The feeling of being part of a functional and collaborative team boosts enthusiasm and empowers everyone to exchange knowledge, breaking down the silo mentality. This boosts employee morale and increases their work efficiency.

 9.Sense of purpose

There is a thin line between employees “sort of doing stuff” and those that have a sense of purpose. By creating an environment where people feel like their knowledge makes a difference, they will clearly see how their work fits in the bigger mission of the organization. Work without purpose is no work at all.

10.Operational efficiency

That is perhaps the most important thing. Sharing knowledge increases the productivity of your team. You can work faster and smarter, as you get easier access to the internal resources and expertise within your organization. Projects don’t get delayed; people swimmingly get the information they need in order to do their jobs and your business fills the bill.

The “Knowledge is Power” adage is long dead as the new reality of the workforce has taught us that sharing knowledge is beneficial to everybody.

Moving one step ahead, I wonder how exciting it would be if we could also earn from our multiple skills!

HOW TO DO THIS AS AN INDIVIDUAL?

Helping others should be a natural extension of every capable individual’s responsibilities. Unfortunately, it does not come as easy as you would think. As privileged and able people, we often get too caught up in operations or our own problems to give people the help they need. However, in the last year, I’ve realized that most of my best clients, partners, and relationships have come from me helping someone for free and for a cost when required.

So how does someone share their multiple skills to the world? We’re all busy with our day-to- day lives, earning a living and eking an existence on Planet Earth.

But if you are willing, there is always some way. Helping others by sharing my multiple skills is something that brings me immense joy; hence I have shared 7 broad services which you can share with the world for free and for a cost:

    1.Professional services (Consultants, Engineers, Marketers, Chefs etc.,)

There are professional service providers as a company, but we are focusing of individuals who have these skills to offer these services. May be, you are in job offering these services, still you would want the world to know your skills for others to connect with you to receive those services form you.

 This is where a mobile app like nettworkk would help!.

 2.Home repair (carpenters, Roofers, Electricians, etc.,)

 In this ‘aggregators’ age, we have aggregators most services including food, taxi, products(amazon.com) and home repair services. Though these app provide customers with more options to choose from, the huge commission these aggregators take from the service providers really hits big on them.

 An app like nettworkk connects customers directly to you instead of them coming through aggregators.

 3.Software Services (Product managers, Solution architects, Developers. Testers etc.,)

Most of the college student eye a software job during college. Hope you agree. If you are trained in the latest software and aptitude skills, there are more chances of you getting through the campus interviews. So, there is always a huge availability of software professionals, testers and currently product managers. Interestingly, there are professionals with multiple skills, say., they are proficient in Java platform, cloud architecture as well as in big data. But they can’t be handling projects in all of them. They could only go by what their company project demands.

 It would be great if they could have a platform like nettworkk which could help them connect with people who are looking for people with these skills to offer projects.

4.Creative services (Writers, Graphic Designers, etc.,)

 It takes real skills and talent to master creative skills. Most people get into these services with seer love and passion for arts. They love colours, literature, imagination, and a sense of WOW in their work.

The speciality of creativity is that it is the basis of all innovation. Creative services need not be limited to arts but could be applied to almost any work including Engineering, Carpentry, Education... you name it!

5.  Personal care (hair stylists, massage therapists, etc.,)

Personal care services have always been close to individuals as we visit at least one personal care service in a month. Especially, working men and women. These services are always in demand and people who provide these services do it with love and care.

As they work physically close to the clients, they develop a sense of connect and client look to a particular service person if they get used to their service.

6.Health care (Doctors, Physio therapists, Nurses etc.,)

If these is a service which requires more inter connectivity with the community is Health care. As there are multiple disciplines in health care including various speciality Doctors, Physio therapists, Nurses, and various lab technicians, they all must be connected to refer the patients to the right specialists.

7.Coaching Services (Online coaching, Private tuition, Sports & Games etc.,)

The most steadily growing industry is the online coaching industry. Due to layoffs and insecure job environment, most of the professionals turn to online coaching to get themselves updated with the latest technologies, strategies, and other required skills.

Here I remember these famous words by American evangelist, Billy Graham who says: “We’re not cisterns made for hoarding. We’re channels made for sharing.” Obviously, what good is any skill if someone decides on hoarding it? The skill would die along with the person that hoards it and is not able to be passed on generation to generation.

Coaching service including sports & games have always been sort after wherever one needed expert guidance. Someone whom to they can go-to for re-evaluating themselves and fine tune their existing skills or learn new skills.

WHERE DOES NETTWORKK COME IN ALL THIS?

NETTWORKK provides you with a platform to share, showcase, and adapt skills with as ease as our day to day social media affairs. The steps for this are easy, create a profile, mention all the skills you can offer for free and for a cost and wanted services for free and for a cost.

NETTWORKK provides an easy connecting ground for people of all strata and ages to bond with each other based on their skills offered and wanted. And you get matched right on your mobile. No more advertisements in classifieds and social media ads!

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[creepingsharia]

Philadelphia whitewashes investigation regarding who is responsible for video of Muslim children that performed in jihad skits

Click here to send your email to express concern to Philadelphia’s Mayor, City Council and PCHR regarding Philadelphia Commission for Human Relations’

The full origin and possible use nationwide of these seeds of wrath and hate being embedded in childrens minds must be taken seriously for the public safety of all Americans.

Click here to send your email to express concern to Philadelphia’s Mayor, City Council and PCHR regarding Philadelphia Commission for Human Relations’ whitewash of investigation of Muslim children performing Jihad skits and singing violent songs. On April 17, 2019, the Muslim American Society of Philadelphia (MAS Philadelphia) and its affiliate Leaders Academy posted a video of Muslim school children singing lyrics including  “we will sacrifice our souls without hesitation…we will chop off their heads and we will liberate the sorrowful and exalted Al Aqsa Mosque …we will subject them to eternal torture…those who accept humiliation what is the point of their existence… we will lead the army of Allah fulfilling his promise.” Florida Family Association sent out an email alert last year titled: The Philadelphia Mayor and City Council have been unresponsive to the need to thoroughly investigate and fully report to the public and federal officials the April 2019 video of Muslim children performing anti-Semitic skits and singing violent songs.   However, Americanthinker.com reported in part on February 2, 2020:

PCHR’s response on October 7 avoided answering any of these tough questions. In fact, the statement merely mimicked and accepted at face value the public statements made by MAS. Specifically, they asserted that the video was a mistake; that Leaders  Academy, the organization that taught the class and created the video was not affiliated with MAS; that the only person responsible, a “volunteer” was dismissed; and that CAIR-Philadelphia’s executive director was enlisted to conduct “anti-bias” workshops. At a minimum, PCHR could have listened to Muslim scholar and member of the Council on Foreign Relations Qanta Ahmed, who provides commentary on numerous media outlets including CNN and BBC.  Ahmed was interviewed on Fox News  about the incident on May 3  and May 5, 2019 -- before PCHR met with the leadership of MAS and the Leaders Academy on May 13.  Ahmed called the Muslim Brotherhood “the mother ship of terrorism” and said that the video comes,     “right from the Muslim Brotherhood Islamist playbook for American youth in Pennsylvania where they are being taught to glorify and romanticize martyrdom, Jew hatred, death to Jews and delegitimization of Israel.” Congressman Zeldin said in an email that he does not believe the PCHR addressed his concern about the relationship between MAS and the Muslim Brotherhood, and noted, “Unfortunately, PCHR has not held anyone accountable yet for this horrendous act.” While it may not be part of their job to track terrorist-related entities, there is nothing stopping PCHR from acknowledging a serious and worrisome link between MAS and the Muslim Brotherhood and recommending further investigation from appropriate government agencies. The question of who is responsible remains an open one. Only one volunteer has been blamed by MAS for the performance. Yet there’s reason to believe MAS is using this volunteer as a scapegoat for the behavior of the school as a whole. Past executive director of the ADL in Philadelphia Nancy Baron-Baer notes that teachers -- more than one -- were in the room leading the class in the performance.      “It’s incumbent on the adults in the room,” said Nancy Baron-Baer, “to understand what was being said and recognize that words like that are absolutely unacceptable at any time, in any language.” Susie Dym, a spokesperson for the Israeli NGO Mattot Arim agrees:     “Where’s that teacher who taught kids to behead people? Does it really make sense that only one single adult heard the speech rehearsed -- although the speech was doubtless practiced many times, since children need lots of practice?” When asked for information about the person dismissed, PCHR avoided the question by responding that its “considered private information that we are not privileged to share.” PCHR also relies heavily on claims that MAS completed “anti-bias” workshops conducted by CAIR-Philadelphia, but offers little information about this supposed remediation. When did it take place? Who attended? What was the itinerary? Was there any follow up with the children forced to sing these songs in the video?   Congressman Zeldin says he believes PHRC should, “definitely have found out more about what went on at this workshop.”    PHRC should also have asked whether CAIR-Philadelphia is the appropriate organization to conduct this so-called “anti-bias” workshop, considering that MAS and CAIR both have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. As federal prosecutors once noted, “CAIR and MAS omit reference to a shared background that limits their membership to those of a particular political bent, and undercuts their credibility.”   And CAIR’s own executive director Jacob Bender has admitted his own bias:     "We should be careful not to conflate criticism of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians with anti-Semitism.  Jews like myself are critical of the oppressive policies of the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.” In other words, CAIR-Philadelphia does not believe these songs were anti-Semitic, they were just anti-Israel. Regrettably PHRC showed complete indifference to what took place at the workshop.  “Any questions about the details of the CAIR trainings would need to be answered by MAS Philly and/or CAIR Philadelphia. “ All efforts to get clarity on PCHR’s understanding of MAS’ relationship with Leaders Academy were also ultimately rebuffed.  In its letter to the congressmen, PCHR went along with MAS’ self-serving and clearly false statement of May 4 that MAS is not affiliated with Leaders Academy, but then acknowledged the contradictory statement of May 15 issued jointly by MAS and Leaders Academy. Yet on May 8, the Investigative Project  posted evidence of an overlapping relationship between MAS and Leaders Academy, including a shared location and identical corporate officers. The Investigative Project also found that “the school is called MAS Leaders Academy and posted “many school videos on MAS social media.”  Additionally, Congressman Zeldin has “inquired with PHRC to see whether they looked at the documents that suggest there was a closer relationship than previously stated. “   PCHR’s curt reply was “PCHR has already provided our comments on this request.” The question remains; why does the PCHR refuse to give credence to credible evidence and valid concerns about MAS?  Why do they stubbornly stand by the specious narrative that the whole affair was an unfortunate mistake and accept MAS’s apology?    The reason may be is that doing so would force PCHR to admit MAS lied to them, that MAS did indeed know it was engaging in radical indoctrination of children, and that would mean they would have to do something about it, which is the last thing the PCHR wants. The full origin and possible use nationwide of these seeds of wrath and hate being embedded in children's minds must be taken seriously for the public safety of all Americans. Florida Family Association has prepared an email for you to send to express concern to Philadelphia’s Mayor, City Council and PCHR regarding Philadelphia Commission for Human Relations’ whitewash of investigation of Muslim children performing Jihad skits and singing violent songs. To send your email, please click the following link, enter your name and email address then click the "Send Your Message" button. You may also edit the subject or message text if you wish.

Click here to send your email to express concern to Philadelphia’s Mayor, City Council and PCHR regarding Philadelphia Commission for Human Relations’ whitewash of investigation of Muslim children performing Jihad skits and singing violent songs.

Contact information:

kenyatta.johnson@phila.gov     darrell.clarke@phila.gov     mark.squilla@phila.gov     james.kenney@phila.gov     jannie.blackwell@phila.gov     curtis.jones@phila.gov     maria.q.sanchez@phila.gov     cherelle.parker@phila.gov     pchr@phila.gov     rue.landau@phila.gov     pamela.gwaltney@phila.gov     rebecca.alpert@temple.edu     thomasearle@libertyresources.org     sricks@camlaw.rutgers.edu     sthomas@northbroad.org 

[blacklistzine-blog]

Meet the Mods

Name: Mix

Pronouns: They/Them

Age: 23

What is my experience with zines/leadership positions in general?

I’ve moderated/am moderating several other zines, and among the current zines are Please, Bokuto-san Zine, Aite Zine, and My Love, My Life Zine. I’m acting in a head moderator capacity for PBS and Aite, and for all my zine projects I have a specialization in finances, audits, and budgets as a result of my job.

I’ve worked as a bookkeeper/night auditor for a profitable restaurant/sports bar since Spring of 2014 and, on any given night I work, I handle and balance between $20,000-$25,000 (sometimes more, depending on how busy that audit day was). Through past work with zines, I’ve established relationships with manufacturers and I’m familiar with leading/organizing large groups of people. Some of my most recent experience with this, outside of zines, is through my University’s marching band, where I’ve been Student Leadership (Personnel Manager, Uniform Manager, and Section Leader) for three years and in charge of working with groups of people to help a 150 person band reach its goals.

Why am I heading this zine?

For a fairly well-written explanation regarding censorship that I support, you can click the link [Here]. For my personal opinions, keep reading. (Content warning for references to past sexual trauma, nothing explicit)

(Following section under Read More for length)

I grew up— and still live— in a conservative, rural area (I’m poor). There are many things I love about where I live. It’s quiet, it’s peaceful, I can see the stars and the Milky Way at night, and the full moon hanging over the mountains and illuminating the valley is so ethereal that it still makes it hard to breathe, even after almost 16 years of living here.

That being said, there are many other aspects of this area that I hate, and among them is the idea that some topics are inappropriate and thus not to be discussed, not to be brought up, not to be considered at all. My high school never offered a comprehensive sex education. I was never taught how to use a condom, or what types of birth control existed. In our Musical Theater class, the one (openly) gay kid in our school wanted to play the role of the heroine in a melodrama that maybe 30 people would attend, but was told he couldn’t because “some of the student’s parents wouldn’t like it”. Our theater department as a whole was stuck using musicals from the 50s (and then only select ones) because our schoolboard wouldn’t approve anything else as “appropriate” for high school students to perform. At one point, I wasn’t even allowed to say “Pour the wine” when performing a piece for an assignment because it wasn’t “appropriate” for a high school student to discuss alcohol, even when playing a character in a skit. I did competitive speech and debate, and my senior year I wanted to do an original oratory about gay marriage (then not legalized in my state) and the LGBT+ Community as a whole, but my coach told me that “judges wouldn’t like it,” so I backed down and got myself stuck with an Oratory that was dispassionate and lackluster.

I’m not campaigning that we should be talking about sex around five year olds, or showing porn in schools, but to try to police content, especially when its creators have been very clear in tagging that content with appropriate warnings and ratings, is abhorrent to me. Let me make my stance crystal clear: Censorship is a conservative agenda to police minds and thoughts, and to disengage critical thinking. Censorship breeds Authoritarianism and I refuse to live my life afraid of the hammer of a new age McCarthyism.

We don’t purchase tickets for an R-Rated horror film only to stand up in the middle of the film and start accusing its viewers and/or director as being murderers or serial killers. My mother loves Silence of the Lambs, but she is not a cannibal. I enjoy Pretty Woman, but I am not a sex worker, and I’m sure as hell not a billionaire (my student loans wouldn’t be quite so pressing if I were). Humans have a natural curiosity about the world in which we live, and other worlds in which we do not, and it is physically (and sometimes morally) impossible to actually experience every story, every sensation, every perspective that creative media allows us to.

Sometimes the stories are dark, but humans have dark thoughts, that’s inescapable. No one wants to have a serial killer after them, but every year hundreds of thousands of people sit down to watch Halloween or Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street because we want to experience the rush and the adrenaline and the question of “What happens next?” in a controlled environment where we are, ultimately, safe.

Sometimes stories don’t have any deep meaning, and exist only to make the audience feel some sort of emotion, be it fear, sadness, happiness, humor, or anger. Sometimes stories involve sexual, physical, or mental abuse, and sometimes stories don’t have happy endings. Sometimes dark stories are created as outlets, or mediums, for the pain and suffering a creator has gone through.

If you are an audience member who has gone through some form of trauma or abuse in your life, and you don’t want to engage with these stories then that’s okay. If you are an audience member who has gone through some form of trauma or abuse in your life and you do want to engage with these stories, then that’s also okay. How you choose to process trauma is your prerogative, and no one else’s.

I am a victim of Child Sexual Assault, and my assaulter was a member of my family who was trusted to babysit me for the night. I was four years old. He never faced any legal consequences for his action, and my family hushed it up and swept it under the rug. To this day, I’ve convinced my family that I don’t remember this happening to me— that I was too young and the memory didn’t stick— but I remember. I remember, and I am 23 years old now, but I am still not ready to tell my story in detail. I’m not ready to tell my story, but I don’t want my story trapped inside my head, and I’m not the only person in the world who feels like this— far from it.

Maybe some creative media involving sensitive topics is just porn, pure and simple, and— well— so what? Porn exists, and it’s never going to stop existing. The Sex Industry is home to the oldest professions in the world and people have been trying to stamp out the sex industry for thousands of years on account of its obscenity. However, they’ve never been successful, and they never will, because, while Asexual individuals absolutely exist (I should know, I’m on the Ace Spectrum), the majority of humans have sex and enjoy it.

However, there is too large a percentage of creative media intended (and marked for) adult audiences that isn’t just about sex, and to ban one is to ban the other— to open people and creators up to questions of “artistic quality” and “social relevance” that are subjective to the individual and can never be anything but.

Stories, artwork, film, literature— they’re all ideas, not actions, and when we try to censor ideas or behave like they have the same weight as an action, we have allowed Authoritarianism to rise, and critical thinking and engagement with media to fall by the wayside.

This is the reason I choose to work on Blacklist, and why I’m determined to see this through. I don’t want to live in a world where ideas are policed, and where adult spaces that have been marked as such are invaded and told they shouldn’t exist. No one deserves to be told their story isn’t okay to tell.

[unscramblingtheliberalarts-blog]

Aydelotte’s Social Media Weather Report: Niche in Small Liberal Arts Colleges

I’ve been compiling posts that contribute to popular discourse about the insularity of small liberal arts colleges. Their “nicheness” has for the most part on Tumblr received praise. For some, the liberal arts college “bubble” ensures a safe space that galvanizes, not stymies, spiritual growth:

oceansofbliss:

I just want to go back to my liberal arts college where everyone is nice and no one is very discriminatory and I live in a happy bubble of accepting joy

(emphasis added)

gryffindored:

the family that i created through my theatre degree in a small, liberal arts school in new england will never cease to amaze me. in times of tragedy, we are always pulling together and making magic happen.

(emphasis added)

theprettypatriot:

But my private school of less than 2000 is where I learned who I was and what I stood for. I figured out that life was absolutely what you made it, and that at the end of the day you are solely responsible for your happiness. I learned that losers quit when they’re tired and winners quit when they’ve won. Most importantly, I learned that it wasn’t your failures, but how you responded to them that defined you.

(emphasis added)

dandelionbreaks:

“The purpose of a university is to engage in dialogue, debate, and exchange ideas in order to try and come to some meaningful conclusion about an issue at hand. Not to shut ourselves off from ideas we find threatening.” — Charles Negy, Professor, Says Students Showed ‘Religious Arrogance And Bigotry’ In A Letter Later Posted On Reddit, emphasis added

Other students spoke of how liberal arts college’s insularity and small class size was a real and significant factor in the college decision-making process:

sunnystrong:

When conducting my college search, I looked for small liberal arts colleges (because I prefer smaller class sizes, and more interactions with professors) with a strong biological science or neuroscience programs (because I want to study those subjects), and Mount Holyoke ended at the top of my list. (emphasis added)

whatcomesnextisstrange:

Calvin’s general population tends to be the sheltered kind that don’t get out enough to really understand the real world, though as they spend time on Calvin’s campus I hope that that is changing. The students that come that don’t have the Dutch CRC background are slowly making differences, whether it be because the discussions they get into tend to be more political or philosophical, or that the general population of the United States is just getting more and more depressed and therefore hopefully more and more introspective.

... I’ve found great people here, not necessarily the people my parents thought I would find of course, their idea of a good friend is basically a robot anyways.

(emphasis added)

marilyns-child:

Then one day, while I was struggling with my decision between the two, I asked my mom for advice... She told me to apply to our local state university for two years and then I could transfer to a liberal arts college. We fought for days over it, but I eventually gave in.

I never made it to the liberal arts college.

...

I lasted a year and a half in college, following everyone else’s dreams for me. I took sixteen credit hours, worked two jobs, and started on a downward spiral that ended with me crying in a professor’s office, telling him I couldn’t do this, I couldn’t continue on. I was drunk, my hips were bleeding from having cut myself, and I hadn’t eaten in two days. By then, I had changed my degree to English ( “You can be a teacher!”) and there wasn’t a second of college I liked. I was miserable in a state school of thousands of students, being taught by professors who didn’t know me, and studying something I didn’t want to.

...

Sometimes, most of the time, following the money isn’t the answer. Following your heart often is.

(emphasis added)

Several posts delved into how the culture of insularity allowed for more open discourse about sexuality and pornography:

chongthenomad:

the awesome thing about the college I go to is that during one of my classes we were playing two truths and one lie and one girl was listing off the facts about herself and the last thing she said was that she was a stripper, and it turns out she actually was one but the thing is no one had any weird or disgusted or creepy looks on their faces, everyone just smiled and nodded and our amazing teacher even asked her where she worked and then she smiled at her and told her how convenient her job was since the strip club was not too far from campus and wow i really love my school

cyandie:

not being in the insular bubble of liberal arts school for several months now has made me even more vitriolicly opposed to porn because i forgot how average ppl really just talk about it and are so unopen to negotiating why [the industry is] heinous! ...

On the other hand, the same “nicheness” that was praised for bringing about a close-knit community also garnered criticism. Some posts touched upon the “liberal,” “left-ist,” “socially mindful/sensitive” stereotypes of people in liberal arts colleges: 

surfcommiesmustdie:

one of my brothers teaches poli-sci at a small liberal arts college in illinois and my dad was telling me he went full cultural marxist. he used to focus on latin american politics but now he’s knee deep in gender stuff and other assorted social justice crap.

i advised disowning him

snout:

person: *holds elevator door open for me*

me: lmaoooo wow, virtue signaling much…? i bet you think youre just SUCH a good person. Oh sorry, did i trigger you? LOL. tough shit, the real world isn’t just a big liberal arts school. uhhh yeah, I’ll take the stairs, THANKS. 😏

Other critiques possessed a less facetious vein, noting the ironic social alienation that such insularity produced:

no-identity-land:

Honestly I’d so love to try and find some new friends or something more through an app or site like Her or Tinder or something, but my campus is ridiculously small and in the middle of nowhere, and my self-esteem can’t handle the thought of rejection (and the inevitability of having to see one of these people all the time on campus) so I’ll just pretend that I’m the one choosing to stay single and save myself the embarrassment lol

(emphasis added, Tagged: lgbt, gay, lesbian)

man-of-prose:

“This is what the real, no-bull- value of your liberal-arts education is supposed to be about: How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default-setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone, day in and day out.” - David Foster Wallace, emphasis added

Another crucial criticism was the lack of access to the general public about academic theory that such insularity inexplicably reinforce:

hedevitoanditsown:

college/academia and various sub-cultures (punk, metal, regional cultural destinations like Portland, etc.) should not be the only avenues for which we recruit people into radical spaces. ... put your theory into practice and teach people the value of solidarity, mutual aid, etc. these people won’t take communism seriously until you divorce the cold-war rhetoric from the reality. starting up food not bombs in your liberal arts college town full of upper middle class liberals isn’t going to get us very far (not that feeding people who are vulnerable is a bad thing).

... 

i think in order for the left to succeed, we need to overcome two major hurdles:

we need to make our theory less confusing and more accessible (breaking news: academia isn’t appealing to a lot of people and neither is theory that’s barely comprehensible. people have more important things going on in their lives, like putting food on their table and caring for their kids/families, than to try and figure out wtf derrida was saying)

we need to actually put our theory into practice (at least the stuff we can immediately, like we don’t need a full-scale revolution to practice mutual aid and democratic decision-making, etc.) and use it to HELP people who actually need it. think black panthers pre-COINTELPRO. because as we’ve seen the political elites of BOTH parties have left the working classes out in the cold to starve, they’re scared and irrational, so fascism is a logical leap for these people.

(emphasis added)

inqilabi:

Women participate in their own silencing. That’s the tragic part. Our own self regulation. We are raised to silence ourselves, become smaller, less visible. Then when women become feminists, you see the same crap… Except it’s got some name of some theory attached, and it’s taught in liberal arts schools or what have you.

Insularity is clearly a multi-faceted topic in discourse about liberal arts college culture on Tumblr. Small class sizes are praised for fostering an often intimate, sympathetic community and opening academic discussion about publicly stigmatized subjects, such as sexuality and porn. Yet, the “nicheness” generated from a tightly knit population does not prevent experiences of social exclusion or loneliness, which students (in this case from the LGBTQIA+ community) have found themselves struggling with. Nor does it solve the issue of general inaccessibility to sociopolitical theory and academics taught in higher education.

[reginas--world]

Blog Post #3

A lot of people would say that graphic novels and comic books are less "legitimate" works of fiction/non-fiction that a traditional novel or non-fiction book. (Has this perspective changed with the popularity of comic book Hollywood films?) What are your thoughts on the merits and/or criticisms of graphic novels/comics as storytelling mediums? 

There has long been the claim that graphic novels and comic books are less “legitimate” works of fiction and non-fiction than the traditional book is considered to be. It appears as if the inclusion of art, leading to fewer words on the page, has led many to dismiss these two mediums as either childish or illegitimate, even if the message of the story is the same as one you would find in a work by Shakespeare, for example. Why is it that you could have the same exact story - one told in a graphic novel/comic book format and one told in a standard novel format - and still have people dismiss the former format as less legitimate than the latter? For years, I have heard many people say that comic books and graphic novels are something for children and that those who enjoy them as adults are in the wrong for doing so. I feel like the massive success of the MCU movies has led to a shift in this perspective but not entirely; one reason I feel hesitant to say that it has changed much stems from the realizations I came to when I took a Film and Literature class in the fall of 2019 at Emmanuel that was primarily structured around the DC/Marvel graphic novels and comic books. We read Black Panther, Wonder Woman, and Captain America and then had to watch the film adaptations as well to draw comparisons. I found it extremely fascinating and actually shocking that a professor was teaching film and literature through these mediums instead of the “classic” works that are typically assigned in an English class. It also brought me back to my sophomore year English class in high school when we read Persepolis, the first time in ten years of schooling I had ever been assigned a graphic novel to read. These were the only instances in my entire schooling career that comic books and graphic novels were included in the curriculum; I wondered why every other book that was ever assigned to me in an English class was a standard book (typically a lot of the “classic works” like Shakespeare, To Kill a Mockingbird, etc.)

Having read so many books for school in this typical words-only format made me wonder why more classes weren’t being taught like my Film and Literature class; I remember the realization I came to was that it was probably because there were still a lot of teachers who did not view these mediums as legitimate and were not willing to let go of the classics. I felt so engaged throughout the semester even as someone who had never really watched any of the DC/Marvel movies before, let alone read the comics, and this experience made me feel that everyone should get to take an English class like this as well. We also drew so many connections to the real world from these comics and their movie adaptations which showed me that it didn’t matter that these weren’t the “classics”. They still had the relevant themes that we had discussed in so many English classes prior so why did it matter that they included more artwork than text? I actually found that the visuals made the story so much more fun to engage with and made me more fascinated in the class overall. My personal experiences have definitely led me to feel strongly about this debate and make it difficult for me to accept any criticisms of comics and graphic novels as legitimate storytelling mediums. I believe people just need to approach it with an open mind and free themselves from these preconceptions before automatically dismissing them.

My Film and Literature class was my first time ever both reading and watching Black Panther. I absolutely loved both the graphic novel and the movie and I would honestly consider it one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. Of course, they could not fit all of T’Challa’s adventures in the novels into this one film but I feel that they stayed true to the strength of his character and his bond with his sister Shuri (who he rescues at one point in the graphic novels; she also plays an extremely large part in T’Challa’s victory in the film).

Making Connections:

#1. This is a short article I found that talks about the actual science behind the benefits of graphic novels serve in the classroom for students (i.e. the effect of images in addition to text on brain processes) and how the presence of these images leads to different interpretations of a story: https://www.ctd.northwestern.edu/blog/research-behind-graphic-novels-and-young-learners 

I imagine this would surely make for more interesting classroom discussions in which the students can offer multiple perspectives on not only what they are reading but also what they are seeing, too. Not to mention I’m sure many kids grow tired of always reading stories for school in the standard book format and reading a graphic novel instead might make them more willing to engage. I think more teachers should attempt this approach and see how it impacts their students’ participation and grades.

#2. I also found a TedTalk by Gene Yang, who was once a teacher and a graphic novelist, in which he expresses the importance of graphic novels in the school curriculum and urges teachers to let go of their refusal to teach using them. I thought it was so upsetting but not at all shocking that he was not allowed to bring a comic to school as his sustained silent reading book when he was a student: https://youtu.be/Oz4JqAJbxj0 

#3. Something else I thought of while I was reading Cinema’s Discovery of the Graphic Novel was how important the character of Black Panther is to the black community in particular. I can remember after the movie’s release and after Chadwick Boseman’s passing, there were so many social media posts and articles written about how Black Panther offered the kind of representation that not only young black children need and deserve to see at an early age but also that black adults have long been waiting to see on the big screen. Without the original Marvel comics, this character would have never existed and became such an important and beloved figure for so many people to see. I imagine anyone who can see the relevance of Black Panther and who is able to see themselves in this character would agree with me that the graphic novel is just as important of a medium as the film is in regards to this franchise. To them, I imagine it is not the medium that is most important but also the message they take from the storylines (sorry, McLuhan) and the real-world implications Black Panther has had for them. Here are 2 videos I found of black voices expressing why Black Panther means so much to them: https://youtu.be/VlF0X1YaHYQ and https://youtu.be/tzp4COHtZNw

[aircoil50]

Do Not Use your Cell phone in Sociable Environments

Is incredibly common for all of us to use somebody else's cellphone also to be each of our very first time. In doing so , were looking to duplicate that initial sense of independence a mobile phone provides. A family member in another express was in the hospital. It was a Saturday nighttime, and I have been invited into a party. Rather than being away having fun I was sitting in my apartment, waiting for the phone to call, restless for reports. It was a pal who lend me his cell phone to make certain I will understand any reports as soon as possible, and in addition, be able to go to the get together. Obviously there was no reason for myself to be connected to my own landline. My spouse and i look backside at that occasion, and in addition in wondering at how gracious my good friend was in loaning me his phone intended for the night (who would volunteer their cell phone away these days? ), I actually couldn’t has stopped being amazed at the freedom this cellular phone gave me. I was able to step out and be cultural - although still becoming accessible at the same time. This is the kind of freedom cellphones provide. But today our telephones are about much more than audio communications, and they are will no longer an optionally available possession. They are integrated into our lives in ways not really their creators thought. But screen period is the fresh sitting in a office chair for hours at a time, which I happen to concur is a awful thing. I have a standing table and it’s been a life-changer. In a time when we are electronically connected nowadays, yet sense even more disconnected than ever before, we are being taught, even admonished, to reduce each of our dependence on cell phones. To limit our amount of time in front of monitors, to put the telephone down and still have a real discussion with an individual, in the flesh. Avoidance of products and display screen time has become becoming a luxurious item; to be able to disconnect from your phones to get an extended time period bestows a status that a lot of us can’t find the money for or attain. Get it done, we are told, for your sanity if not humankind, and also for your neck: regularly looking down at your cellphone strains the lower back, that leads to all kind of physical soreness. I’ve actually experienced recurring stress symptoms with my hand from excessive scrolling, and i also could vow my forearm sometimes is painful in a strange place in the event I’ve employed my mobile phone for too long. Nevertheless is usually using our cell phones a lot really so bad? Does being addicted to each of our phones genuinely disconnect all of us from other folks as much we think? Are not generally there rewards for the actions that occupy us while we are clutched to our cell phones? When we use our phones, perhaps there is something we are missing that we would be carrying out otherwise? We get a lot out of using my own cell phone, so no, Dont really want to place it down. The answer is not to be socially shamed in to using my cell phone fewer. The solution is to be sure cellphone use is hard to kick and beneficial and entertaining, not a distraction coming from boredom or perhaps isolating you from cultural or professional settings. The key is to be deliberate and aware about how youre using your phone, not whether you’re using it at all or perhaps too much. Each of our minds will be constantly operating, processing each of our many thoughts, worries, concerns, plans. We really need a distraction from everything, but at times, life is not so clear cut. Take those movies. We go, nearly exclusively, into a movie theater using a strict simply no phones, no texting insurance plan. They will chuck your rear end out when you use a mobile phone in the theater. However when I was having a friend, in which theater, who was being endlessly texted by his partner. As it happens her mother is at critical well being trouble. This individual wound up leaving the movie to organize to go to the airport. As wonderful as a continuous movie encounter is, it doesn’t trump emergencies when they arise. Few experiences with some other person will be as romantic and connecting as a shared meal. (Hang on, I’ll get to sexual intercourse in a day. ) If perhaps there was at any time a moment once you would need to bond with another individual, directly, eye to eye, without distraction, it would be over a food. Yet, much like everything, there may be exceptions. Imagine if, over the course of the conversation, you begin referring to taking a trip together, or perhaps about countrywide parks, or perhaps about decreasing in numbers species? Looking up photos showing your companion can add to the conversation. Quickly Googling a well known fact or reference point can help inside your argument. Writing a social networking post you found provocative, interesting or perhaps important could be a launching point of a chat. In those occasions, you aren’t distancing yourself or putting something among you and another person, you are sharing your thoughts. Believe me, sharing can be a good factor. What Im not arguing is that the both of you should be taking a look at Facebook, individually, without interesting together. What I am stating is that your phone can be a conduit, a guide, a personal resource intended for source material, to bring and help the talk. In the event the focus continues to be on the both of you, the smart phone is a prop. If the focus is usually centered on the phone, the gadget is the main seduction and you’ve dropped bond. The previous is wonderful, these is not really. All of our phones are a device. Just how all of us choose to use this device is actually give them all their benefit. One could think the past place you would want cellular phone distraction could be the bedroom. On the surface, two people lying down in bed following to each other, every with cell phones in their hands, all but neglecting each other, feels like one of the most gloomy, soul-hurting scenes one may easily think of modern life. Nevertheless would it be naturally negative? If I’m reading the New York Times, what does it matter if perhaps I’m examining the actual paper or the digital version in the cellphone? If I’m checking e-mail, what does it subject if I possess a notebook computer or mobile phone? If I’m practicing games or otherwise distracted, what does it matter if I am browsing a book of playing some game? https://www.macworld.com/article/3278585/apple-smartphone-addiction-ios-12.html And besides, would not we occasionally glamorize studying in bed together? I love studying books, and discover it kind of hot my partner will too. Carrying out that during sex together, after that talking about what we’re browsing, is a great intellectual turn-on. So with all due admiration to plenty of experts, in this case, the medium can be not the message. What matters here is not the device itself, but the activity you’re engaged in, either jointly or separately. There can still be togetherness when two people are on their very own phones, in the same way there is when ever reading books. Their challenge arises when utilization of a phone changes something, or triggers a split up when a point of interconnection would otherwise take place. Might removal of your mobile phones from understructure mean more sex? Maybe. Should likewise lead to somebody getting out of bed faster in the morning hours, or perhaps sleeping faster at night. And while we’re while having sex, did you know that through your phone, you can watch video clips? Or perhaps look at photos of…. what ever it can be that arouses you? Or work with applications intended to foster discussion or activity with a loving partner? The product is a device. It is present without inherent judgment, qualities or worth. What we label of it is about us. Must i really need to tell you this? Certainly there are times when you must absolutely hardly ever touch your smartphone, beginning, certainly, with traveling.

(Guilty as incurred: I often use the Roadmaps programs on my phone to assist me acquire where I’m going. It isn’t really so straightforward, is it? ) I think religious services must be device-free areas, as should particular spaces, like gym bathroom rooms, where privacy needs to be respected. I have a distaste for those who use all their phone at the health club; I don’t need to hear your company calls while I’m lifting weights. On the other hand, I realize a lot of persons using work out and workout applications on the smartphone, demonstrating the point, that once more, these kinds of mini-pc systems within our pockets will be what we label of them. If you’re among those individuals that attend a live performance and insist on documenting video clips and shooting photographs the complete time, I actually ask how most of that is important. Experiencing the moment in time for yourself, not merely through a device, is highly recommended. But…. have got I ever watched live concert footage on YouTube taken by someone else? Yes, I've. Just a few years back I was for a field hockey game with my Dad. I have been in the habit of checking Myspace during games to follow along with the city of followers and mass media to help boost my experience of the game, also to know more about the fact that was going on. And that’s perfect for when watching in the home. But I had been there. My spouse and i didn’t need that network - I had been with twenty, 000 persons, and my father. Thus I set my mobile phone in my pocket sized. I missed the discourse. I skipped the details of items I didn’t see because live, you miss more than you think. Nevertheless I was able to soak inside the setting. I had been able to talk to my Dad as to what we believed would happen following. And later, during the night, when we mentioned the game, we all reflected in so many different moments, details I would have missed had We looked at my personal smartphone even more. So there is always a trade off. You will discover moments when your smartphone may distract you. That frenzymadness, desperation, hysteria, mania, insanity, delirium, derangement can be a poor thing (when you should be talking with a liked one) or possibly a good thing (when you’re miserable and alone and want something to cheer you up). It can detach you (when you avoid another person simply by diving in social media) or provide you with together (if you look up a joke to share or make use of your cellphone to turn on music to dance to). Let us not keep our products responsible for the human condition. A couple, lovers, let’s say, laying in bed. In one moment, they are both on their cell phones, lost inside their own sides. In the next, their very own phones happen to be off, for the bedside stand. What happens next? Anything can occur. It’s up to the two people included. That’s true whether you have your phone in your hand or not. And if you do, in addition, you choose using your telephone: in a disconnecting way or possibly a sharing way. If you’re feeling bad or guilty about being on your own phone, you know what you should perform. You are required to trust your instincts. Is undeniably critical to keep the person holding the cellphone liable, do not blame the product.