People will claim to be a fan of some thing and then hate all of the themes and motifs and story lines and plot lines and protagonists and antagonists like man I don’t think that you actually like it here

i knew this screenshot would come in handy

Huh. My bad, I didn't know there were rules on how to enjoy something 🙄

There are. For all of the bitching and moaning, you do have to ultimately like something for what it is to be able to say you enjoy it. That’s what those words mean. Hope this helps 👍

#if you say you like banana bread but you don't like bread or bananas #and make it with chocolate as a brownie instead #you are not a fan of banana bread #so yeah there are rules dumbass #it's called 'rules of logic'

Preserving @letmetellyouaboutmyfeels' tags.

A proposal

Sometimes, in fandom, we just want to write id-tastic fic that rolls around in tropes that might be viewed as problematic. But we don’t want to address the problematic side of things in this particular fanwork; we just want to roll around and wallow.

It is considered courteous to give readers a heads-up via use of AO3 tags. I propose a tag that signals that a given fanwork is for rolling around, not giving a measured evaluation of anything. The MCU has carved out a space for this sort of fic with the “HYDRA Trash Party” tag, for which I commend them. Trash Party is a bit too specific to cover all of the ground I’m thinking of here, though; I propose “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat.”

For those of you not familiar with Arrested Development, Michael Bluth finds a paper bag in the freezer labeled “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat.” He opens the bag, finds a dead dove, and reacts as follows:

[gif of a white man saying “I don’t know what I expected” in a deadpan manner]

The “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” tag would essentially be a “what it says on the tin” metatag, indicating “you see the tropes and concepts tagged here? they are going to appear in this fic. exactly as said. there will not necessarily be any subversion, authorial commentary condemning problematic aspects, or meditation on potential harm. this fic contains dead dove. if you proceed, you should expect to encounter it.”

(more at KnowYourMeme: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-dont-know-what-i-expected)

That post that's like "stop writing characters who talk like they're trying to get a good grade in therapy" really blew the door wide open for me about how common it's become for a character's emotional intelligence to not be taken into consideration when writing conflict. I remember the first time I went to therapy I had such a hard time even identifying what I was feeling, let alone had the language to explain it to someone else. Of course there are plenty of people who've never been to therapy a day in their life who are in tune to their emotions. But even they would have some trouble expressing themselves sometimes. You have to take into account there are plenty of people who are uncomfortable expressing themselves and people who think they're not allowed to feel certain ways. It also makes for more interesting conflict to have characters with different levels of understanding.

what is this from

the titanic

I FUCKING FORGOT I QUEUED THIS

For all who celebrate man’s hubris!

it drives me bonkers the way people don't know how to read classic books in context anymore. i just read a review of the picture of dorian gray that said "it pains me that the homosexual subtext is just that, a subtext, rather than a fully explored part of the narrative." and now i fully want to put my head through a table. first of all, we are so lucky in the 21st century to have an entire category of books that are able to loudly and lovingly declare their queerness that we've become blind to the idea that queerness can exist in a different language than our contemporary mode of communication. second it IS a fully explored part of the narrative! dorian gray IS a textually queer story, even removed from the context of its writing. it's the story of toxic queer relationships and attraction and dangerous scandals and the intertwining of late 19th century "uranianism" and misogyny. second of all, i'm sorry that oscar wilde didn't include 15k words of graphic gay sex with ao3-style tags in his 1890 novel that was literally used to convict him of indecent behaviour. get well soon, i guess...

I saw a review of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall that said 'I can't believe people think this was a feminist book'.

Like, do you know how swooningly, outrage-causingly shocking it was that the main character slammed her bedroom door in her abusive husband's face? Do you have any idea how unthinkable it was that she denied him access to her space and her person? She was supposed to submissively look away while he turned their son into an alcoholic for his own amusement and seduced innocent young women! It was revolutionary in 1848; when Bronte (Anne) wrote it, she had to do so under a male psuedonym because publishers wouldn't accept works by women unless they were harmless pap, which was all that was thought suitable for women to read lest their mild and gentle minds be corrupted.

The reason these groundbreaking books of history seem to tame and understated now is because they worked. They raised the bar, pushed the agenda forwards, cleared the path for the next writer. They did exactly what they were supposed to. Time is linear. History moves forward. We make progress.

When you are old, if things happen as they ought, a future generation of teenagers will read The Hate U Give and Simon and the Homo Sapiens' Agenda and Speak and think to themselves 'why did anybody ever think this was contraversial? Why did they ban them? These are just things we talk about, these are things we deal with like normal people. What was the past like, and how do we stop from backsliding into a place where these things are considered shocking again?"

I really hope that's how it goes.

First rule of literary analysis: the analyst cannot judge a past work by modern standards or ethics. Doing so leads to faulty comprehension, straw man fallacies, and lazy logic and analysis. We must always consider the work within the broader frameworks of the history, culture, and events that shaped it.

Unpopular opinion but if you don't enjoy the process you should find a different thing to do.

And I think this is true in general but now I'm talking about it in the context of AI.

If you don't enjoy making art and only care about the end piece and how it'll look and how much traction it"lol get online then making art is not something for you, find something you enjoy from start to finish.

Same goes for writing: if you do not enjoy writing and rewriting and then some more and instead want AI to write for you, being a writer is not something you should pursue.

Sure, not every part of creative process is going to be equally enjoyable but you should get satisfaction from solving the problems along the way and you should get a sense of accomplishment on your way of "making the piece yours" and you should have a sense of ownership once you are done.

None of these things will come from typing in a prompt into chatGPT. And I am sad to see so many people are missing on the opportunity to experience the joy of making something with their own hands and brains.

you will live to witness manmade horrors that are completely within your comprehension if you've paid any attention to a single piece of human history but are nevertheless still huge bummers

"every possible kind of content can be found on the internet" yeah sure except for the One fucking thing I'm looking for. why does no one want to talk about the One Singular thing I'm looking for. but yeah other than that everything is on here.

Is this what you’re looking for perchance?

it wasn't, but by god it sure is now

Honestly I can tell you finding out art was made by AI really does immediately, legitimately sour it for me, like people will trot this out as a Gotcha for anti-AI people but it's just making it clear they don't consider art to be the conversation that it is lol. It's similar to the way Harry Potter immediately soured for me because engaging with it while knowing the kind of heart Rowling is writing from changes the way the work feels; there isn't any moralizing or whatever that I have to do, it's easy to drop it because it's rotted in my hands.

"Oh but you LIKED this song before, nothing changed!" The conversational partner did. A very large portion of what is interesting to me about art is thinking of why the creator chose that instrumentation, or what made them want to make the thing in the first place. Finding out I've been talking to a wall completely removes an entire third of the force that art is to me, and I can't argue that anything about art or its consumption is Objectively Correct but I can argue it's fucking boring lmao

100%

In 2003, James Frey published a book titled Million Little Pieces that was ostensibly about his personal history with substance abuse. It was a critical darling that received frequent plaudits and a great deal of commercial success.

In 2006 it was revealed that the book was actually a work of fiction and that Frey had not experienced the struggles he claimed in the text. The house of cards immediately collapsed as audiences and critics realized the deception. Overnight Frey's cultural cache vanished and with it, his novel.

There were, as with AI today, people defending Frey after the truth emerged. They argued that the content was the same and even when known as a work of fiction, the prose hadn't changed. But the broader culture felt the shift. Their relationship to the work was not the same as before. This was not connecting with a real person's loved experience. This was a lie. Regardless of where one fell on the acceptability of Frey's misrepresentation, his book is now largely forgotten from our culture.

AI is the same. The people hawking them are pretending as if it's the same as a real person's experience and artistry, but it isn't. It's shapes in the clouds. It's offloading the entire artistic experience onto the audience and asking them to pay you for the privilege. There is no artist who you're understanding and sharing a moment of human connection. It's just lines on a page.

happy phoenix wright eats glass day to those who celebrate

the degree that parents of young children seem to think Baby Shark came out of nowhere astounds me. this is a DECADES-OLD camp song, that has spanned generations. 

i am not a parent of a young child but i worked at summer camps for years and let me tell you before it was ruined by parents of young children baby shark was the most fun camp song ever. kids went buckwild over baby shark. but then it had to be commercialized. you ruined it. yall motherfuckers stay away from the bear song or we’ll have words 

#part of the problem w/ commercializing camp songs#other than you know Everything#is that it canonizes a specific version#one of the best parts of baby shark was that every camp had slightly different versions#does the singer die and go to hell?#are they reincarnated as a shark?#are they left as a concsious severed head bobbing in the waves?#it was different each time it was sung and its fucking beautiful

I think maybe Children’s camp and schoolyard songs are the last, true, “folk music,” by the strictest definition.

first they made it mandatory to log in everywhere. create an account to download your free template Log in to access resource give us your email nowwwww. Now the humble password is being killed too. open your magic email link! type your 6 digit code that we texted you because we required your email and your phone number! we’re gonna call you and whisper a code sweetly in your ear so you can log in to your account. yes it has a password but you cant use that anymore. okay? poob is gonna call you. now poob is just gonna call you.

i had a thought of "do people not know what AUs are anymore?" and then i remembered nobody explains fandom stuff to new people anymore so it is entirely plausible people genuinely don't know what AUs are and nobody has explained it to them, so for today's lucky 10,000:

"AU" stands for "Alternate Universe" or "Alternative Universe" (same difference) and is basically any thought scenario for a fandom that isn't canon and can't fit within the canon universe. If it takes place in the canon universe but something is notably different, that is typically what's known as a "Canon divergent AU," because it diverges from canon.

an AU can be absolutely anything. There's a couple of widespread pan-fandom au scenarios that often get thrown around, like coffee shop aus, genderbend aus, hanahaki aus (hanahaki is a whole thing in itself i'd recommend researching on your own), etc. One you might hear sometimes is "crossover AU" which is when you have characters from one fandom interacting with characters from another.

You can have as many aus as you want. They can be whatever you want and you can do whatever you want in them. It's a sandbox for you to play around in and explore how things would be different or how the characters would act in those circumstances or environments. Maybe they have different relationships with each other. Maybe they behave slightly differently. Or you can just say "Okay, [x] is true. How did they get here? How would things have to be different for this to occur?" which can also be fun.

If you are ever confused about why people ship something that seems completely out of the blue or doesn't make sense to you in the canon setting, there's a good chance they like it in an AU setting! Not everything everybody is interacting with is necessarily the canon! Not everybody wants things to exist in canon and just want to explore playing dolls in a different sandbox and that's okay. And their sandbox might look a lot different than yours, and that's also okay. You have the freedom to make your sandbox whatever you please. Do whatever you want forever. Get funky with it. AUs are fun.

Okay that's my schpeal. everybody go have fun and play nice now.

Winter has arrived on Poob.

Start your 7 day free trial of Poob today, and watch smash hit Martin Scorcese's Goncharov.

Love some miserable Elon in the morning

normally stuff like this feels performative because anyone can talk shit online to someone and most normal people would just ignore it and block you but in this instance its the funniest thing in the world because you know for a fact its getting to him

👁️ DREDGE 👁️