Put in the tags your location and if your experience was the norm

fine. fine. fine. here it is. DON’T watch this

this doesn’t have a fake answer and i know earnest polls get reblogged less. but uh…… what if i ask nicely.

tumbl removing hyperlinks from dashboard and on-blog posts could just be a bug but i refuse to believe it is anything other than "we saw a lot of you doing that to avoid the tracker, so we took it away. now if you want easy, you HAVE to use the permalink tracker"

hilariously this breaks 'prev tag' chains and whatnot which is. If it was intentional ppl are gonna notice and get extremely mad, right

cool new feature where if you see a post and want to see the OG post you have to fucking scroll thru OP's blog for ten million years. if you want to see the blog that got rb'd from in the chain you have to scroll thru their blog for ten million years. imagine posts older then a day. imagine posts older than a YEAR. good website

we have to see posts the way god intended again. on our custom themes

There is a type of plot that is prevalent in YA books and starting to get into general lit that I do not like. It is a similar trope to the MacGuffin, but instead of the plot being driven by an object, it is driven by the characters being in some sort of situation with formally fixed stakes.

Just as a MacGuffin is an object with no specific properties that affect its importance to the story, the identifying characteristic of this plot is that exact nature of the situation is irrelevant or at least not very important.

A very common example is when characters are involved in some sort of game or competition—for example, the first Throne of Glass book involves the protagonist competing to become the king's assassin, but the plot of the book would need to change very little if the competition was a beauty pageant.

"Gamified" plot lines like this often also include MacGuffins (to drive the "game"), confirming the tropes' similarity in my head.

The other common example is the "magic/superhero/assassin school" plot. The "school" is often just a device that brings the characters together and keeps them on a predetermined track, but there's nothing about what the characters are learning or even the school's specific identity as an educational institution that affects the plot.

so here's what i'm talking about:

The Hunger Games is NOT an example of this. The specific nature of the "games" drives and affects the plot on every level: it threatens the immediate survival of the characters, defines the culture and politics of the world, and affects the characters' relationship with each other. How the Hunger Games came to be, how tributes are selected, how the games are filmed and broadcast, and the "rules" of the game are all relevant.

But some of the successors of THG picked up the "formal game/competition" aspect and jammed it into their stories as a kind of pre-cast mold for the plot and stakes. This sucks and it's annoyingly commonplace.

These plots are probably attractive because they let authors avoid, or at least postpone, the hard questions about character motivation and stakes by trapping the character within an institution or binding arrangement of some kind.

When you're in college, you can offload most of your motivation to do things onto their utility in helping you graduate. However, as a college student, you also regularly face the question, "Why don't I drop out and become a stripper?"

Okay, that question is a stand-in for the general "why am I doing this, and why don't I leave?" but I think it's a good test to apply to stories where a protagonist older than like 15-16 attends an Institution.

If the answer is "they literally Cannot leave," you Must include this in your awareness of the kind of story you are writing. Your character is trapped in a coercive situation, and it makes sense for this to affect them in some way.

What you must Not do is use the coercive nature of the situation to "bury" the question of your character's motivation.

You must also be prepared to write About Institutions and to do so consciously. If a formal structure or coercive force is needed to prevent your character from fucking off out of the story entirely, that's a conflict and friction that underlies everything else. You can write this kind of story without explicitly tapping that conflict, but if you're trying to do something like that and it's???? very? hard??? it's worth looking into this as the reason why.

There's something here about how people have learned to be unable to see the The Friction as a "conflict" in a storytelling sense. Really, all of us are part of at least one Structure that would kill us for trying to leave.

Interpreting this in literature sounds very similar to what's called a Marxist reading of a book.

I'm writing this out partially because if you grew up on YA books, it's Super Easy to reproduce tropes as a baby writer that work or don't work depending on an element you don't know exists and that isn't taught.

This one in particular led me down into a bout of writer's block that I ultimately never solved, back when I was 15 or so. I hit a wall that can be described as "my character is basically in a cult, she doesn't have any of the tools to escape it, and the plot requires her to" and I realized this, but I did not have the vocabulary to make sense of what the problem was—she had what seemed like sufficient MOTIVATION to escape the cult, but she COULDN'T, because psychologically she could not do it, and therefore I could not make her do it.

The dominant narrative of writer's block was "push through it and ignore it," and this killed the entire project for me, because my inability to "make" her do the thing she wanted deep down was completely puzzling.

And this was because I hadn't intentionally designed her situation as a cult, and it hadn't occurred to me that there was a unique psychological aspect to being in a cult, because it was so similar to the books I was reading at the time—YA books with characters being driven through very structured, authoritarian institutions like a complex system of pipes.

There is, again, hella commentary on the society that writes these stories here, and it occurs to me that the whole idea of "motivation" as the main driver of a character's actions is very in line with rugged-individualism and capitalism.

It assumes a character is an independent, rational agent that acts to pursue an external goal, focusing on the character's agency and desire to obtain "something" they do not have.

The fatal flaw of this paradigm is very simple: real people have limited agency, do not know what they want, and do not act rationally, and well-written, complex characters usually reflect this.

In Othello, the titular character loves Desdemona and wants to be loved by her, but Iago toys with and amplifies his fear and mistrust, and he ends up murdering her instead. It is not useful or really even correct to say that Othello has a goal, or that he is motivated by desire for something; if you do frame it that way, you have to explain why his actions actively sabotage the thing he wants, and this explanation is likely to shift the "agency" onto Iago, and be very awkward in exploring Othello. I use Othello as an example because for me, it was a viscerally hard-hitting story about a character whose marginalization had made his approach to relationships deeply dysfunctional, because his constant awareness of his marginalization sabotaged his ability to trust.

You can say a great variety of things about Shakespeare's portrayal being racist or not, but his understanding of the experience of being "othered" hit like a ford f-350 being driven by a drunk wannabe redneck. And that's the main quality that I think makes Shakespeare enduring? The man had a DEEP understanding of the ways people have Something Wrong With Them and specifically could portray people doing wildly irrational things and show why it made sense for them to.

This was one of the things that I, as a baby writer, knew so crisply I could taste it, but simply did not have the words for—what a character wants is rarely what they think they want or what they have the mental and emotional tools to pursue, and it often doesn't make sense for them to have enough insight into themselves to make actions oriented toward a goal that aligns with their "wants." "Motivation" in the sense of an external goal or explicit desire is used interchangeably with "motivation" in the sense of driving emotions and urges, and those are VERY, VERY DIFFERENT.

Some little clay fellows and I will be at the Higher Fire table in downtown SJ this Friday night. If you don't have plans, come say hey!

The cat will not be present.

OK bear with me here but re: pterry's fantasy of revolution & faith in Good Individuals fixing insitutions........

Last year when I reread like 10 discworld books in a month cause I finished my thesis & was. depressed. One thing I noticed is how LONELY most discworld protagonists are.

There's lots of jokes floating around about how pterry doesn't write romance plots - but he also doesn't really write friendships? Not equal, close, supportive friendships. He mostly writes about Lonely ppl with a bone deep sense of justice.... and their coworkers.

Vimes, for example, doesn't confide in his wife about his work, even tho she'd like him to. He doesn't really have anyone he trusts and sees as an equal in his mission of Watching the Watchmen. Other ppl fear or revere or support him, but he tries not to need it either way.

Cause he's, as u said, basically like a witch. & there's the running joke about witches being like cats, preferring to be alone, having personal space the size of a townland etc. And like we see Granny weatherwax is friends with Nanny Ogg, but most (all?) care & support Nanny Ogg provides Granny, she provides in direct opposition to Granny's stated wishes. Granny isolates herself from her one friend & equal for long periods of time. She spends a lot of time sniping at other witches, too. Granny doesn't want to need support.

Tiffany Aching, Moist Von Lipwig, Death, Susan, William de Worde. Even when they have backup, they don't WANT to rely on it. These characters don't have COMRADES is my point. They might speak for the voiceless & fight for what's right but it's not mutual? They don't have solidarity with anyone.

& this realisation struck me as really tragic! partially because I was depressed lmao.

He writes silly secret societies and he writes out of touch, idealistic revoltionaries (reg shoe my beloved) ....but his protagonists are the iron-willed loners within cruel systems. No comrades. No solidarity.

Discworld is, as u say, a world where existing systems just need the right ppl at the helm. We just need a GOOD dictator. But bc the system is so corrupting, these iron-willed individuals have to do it alone. And that's sad. And lonely. And unrealisitc!

Now Monstrous Regiment and Amazing Maurice both buck this trend & show us something that looks a little less lonely, a little more comradely.

But I do find it so striking. This image of the lonely, just individual. Holding back a tide of darkness, alone. It isn't fair. And it doesn't WORK like that in this world.

Tl;dr: @ Discworld Protagonists: real cahoots will change ur life.

Pokemon theory

so, y'know the whole deal with Charizard being fire/flying instead of fire/dragon, right?

so my theory is this: it's not a dragon type, since it's not a TRUE dragon, the same way horseshoe crabs aren't TRUE crabs

instead, it's an example of mimicry

the most dragony-dragon in pokémon of all time is arguably dragonite, which has a higher stat total than Charizard, at a solid 600 total

and the two look INCREDIBLY similar, same wing shape and color, same body shape (albeit weird a longer neck and tail), and even the same belly coloration! Charizard isn't an actual dragon, it's only SHAPED like a dragon

this is called batesian mimicry, and a pretty common example is hoverflies looking like wasps

I think that if you want relationships depicted in your fiction – whether primary media or fan-work – to be emotionally compelling, there's really no getting around the fact that one of the most compelling relationship dynamics in fiction is "hey, wouldn't it be fucked up if".

And I don't just mean "one of them is clearly taking advantage of the other" type relationships, either. There's a whole spectrum of upfuckery to explore, including (but not limited to):

ken getting arrested alongside barbie after she punches the guy who smacks her ass presents so many possibilities

this 🤝 vievee francis saying the poem won’t be ruined if you let us in

[ID: tweet from Brian Tierney @/BTTierney85 reading,

"tracy k smith once told me i should strive to end poems by opening a door outward not closing one and now it happily haunts every poem i try to write"

/end ID]

okay king

sorry but it’s actually so horrific how little of a sense of community people have, how little regard they extend towards the other humans around them. killing people for being loud on the subway or turning around in your driveway. loading your gun and waiting at the door because a child ran your doorbell unexpectedly. ring cameras, neighborhoodapp, community watch group Facebook pages. you’ve assigned yourself the role of the one true peacekeeper and casted everyone else around you as a threat to be controlled. there’s no connection or love or compassion. just a deep distrust and hatred.

and the people who face the most significant consequences from this are the ones who are already deemed as outsiders. people of color, especially Black people, disabled people, people with mental illnesses, homeless people.

and so many people are willfully promoting this complete alienation from each other. the obsession with true crime, the hatred directed at children for existing in public spaces, the policing and controlling of where homeless people are allowed to be / what they’re allowed to do, the constant fearmongering about public transportation. you are building a society of FEAR. you are conditioning yourself to distrust everyone around you. you need to make an active, conscious effort to engage with the world and the life around you in a healthy manner.

Im learning that way too many of you have no regard for your own safety or the safety of your data and also that you would be found by bailifs in a day

No but really, pro tip. If you never ever respond to your name until you know who is on the phone, then anyone chasing debts cannot confirm that you are at that number.

Caller: "hello, can I speak to [name] / am I speaking with [name]?"

You: "I'd like to know who's calling / who am I speaking with?"

Caller "this is [caller]"

You: "why do you need to speak with [name]?"

Don't give them ANY information about you til you know who they are and why they're calling. Even if you're not in any financial trouble or have any debts this is real good practice

oooh this is good

no descriptive word that comes to mind here is right cuz i keep thinking of shit like "surreal" and "insane" when there's no actual element of confusion it's just like. yknow when you drop smth & it smashes & you'd never before thought about what wld happen if that thing hit a flat surface at speed but, duh, obviously it smashes? yeah

anyway my dad's dad died on friday

he had terminal cancer. he found out two weeks ago. he did not tell my father, the last time he properly talked to my father was his previous health death scare a couple years ago. he was a shitbag cunt and i am glad he is dead.

my dad told me how he found out friday morning and he went home early from work and then by saturday he was over it. which is mostly what the aforementioned feeling is about, cuz like. yeah i wasnt expecting him to be that upset. as previously mentioned: unrepentant cunt literally until his dying day. it just feels very weird. what if now i actually doxx his mother