🌸🌸🌸

Playing (w/Screens)

Game IDs

RP Blogs

Other Blogs

Deactivated RP Blogs

bladesrunner

♪ Creeper gonna reaper gonna creep and walk the night
All right, all right, look out, night
Creeper got mad and angry eyes
One look from him can paralyze
Resist at any time or place
Creeper done slap right ‘cross your face ♪

M3GAN (2022) dir. Gerard Johnstone

2334
mllecosettefauchelevent

“Authors should not be ALLOWED to write about–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“This book should be taken off of shelves for featuring–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Schools shouldn’t teach this book in class because–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Nobody actually likes or wants to read classics because they’re–” you are an anti-intellectual and an idiot

“I only read YA fantasy books because every classic novel or work of literary fiction is problematic and features–” you are an anti-intellectual and you are robbing yourself of the full richness of the human experience.

annaveriani

"you are functionally a conservative" is such a good and clarifying insult

Literally right after I saw this post, I saw another post in a discord chat for BOOK EDITORS in which an outspokenly liberal editor talked about how Nabokov should have never been published because he wrote about p*dophiles and described women's bodies in ways that made her uncomfortable. She described his writing as "objectively terrible" and said she wanted to burn his books. And other editors were bringing up classics they didn't like and talking about how they wanted to throw them in the trash. This wasn't like a light "unpopular opinion!" conversation. This was actual book editors talking about how books should be destroyed and censored.

There is something so scary and toxic in global culture right now. The revival of fascism is influencing everyone's mindset and approach to art, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.

I see far more books being censored today than when I was a kid. Librarians handed me The Catcher in the Rye, The Sexual Politics of Meat, and Animal Farm when I was literally 8-11. My mom would never have taken a book away from me. I read everything from the Tao Te Ching to the Qur'an to atheist texts under my desk at school. Teachers thought nothing of it or encouraged it. Books seemed universally acknowledged as sacrosanct to me.

Now I can't find any adults who don't hesitate or want to make exceptions when it comes to censorship. Even the most liberal social activist librarians I know go, "well except for book X..."

Functionally conservative. It's so important to have the language to express that.

mllecosettefauchelevent

Thank you for this addition!

cricketcat9

And, following up on the previous post …

“This makes me uncomfortable” is NOT a valid reason for censorship

These fucking book editors should remove themselves from the profession ASAP 😡

prismatic-bell

The only reason a book should be removed, the ONLY reason, is “we are keeping it in the restricted section for research because its only intended function is to cause harm.”


And to be clear, when I say this, I’m talking about shit like To Train Up A Child and The Protocols of Zion. One is a text responsible for the deaths of multiple children because it’s an abuse how-to, and the other is entirely fabricated “protocols” from a group that never actually existed but is claimed to represent all Jews, and it’s basically one long antisemitic screed.

And even these should be available. Just. Not where they’re gonna be used to start a white supremacist cult.

panicatthefandomboy

One of the beauty of books

Reading is optional,

Putting a warning of misinformation is easy,

And banning them is next lvl pointless.

And honestly, even the bad books have words of wisdom in them, because they're filled with a list of "dumb shit not to do".

So yeah, don't sniff glue but read a book instead. 10/10 would rate it a better drug gor your mind than glue

sinmenon

One of the things that baffles me is how often people lack critical thinking. Not always you are supposed to sympathize with the protagonist, like in the case of American Psycho and Lolita. You are supposed to read and go “uh, this person is f’d up” and reject that kind of behavior, not cheer for their success. Animal Farm, 1984, so many books you are supposed to read and think about it, to feel uncomfortable about what you read and decode the message and not just turn off your brain – there are other books for that. If you want to turn off your brain and enjoy the ride, there’s tons of other books for that too! If you don’t like, don’t interact.

Another thing that is important is that some darker subjects were either part of the history that shouldn’t be forgotten or we could repeat it (I’m looking at you, Huckberry Finn) or that can be important in letting readers figure out that “Hey, maybe my situation is messed up?”. I remember seeing a post about a fanfic writer going “Sorry disappearing, but when doing research for my fic I figured out that maybe I was living in a cult??? and then had to get out of that situation”. This kind of stuff is important. Again, let’s pick Lolita for example: you are supposed to think the protagonist is a creep and not right in the head, he is an unreliable narrator and is misinterpreting the girl’s cues. Meanwhile if you are in Dolores position you can go “wait… this older dude is actually a creep and is grooming me!” and start to take steps towards being safe.

In the end, the rule of thumb is: if I’m not the target audience it isn’t my problem.

The only exception is, of course, books with hateful messages that incite people to hurt others in real life. Books that aren’t a criticism about evil behavior but encourage it. It may be important to document that these exist but shouldn’t be encouraged.

46377
mawichandoodles
What is the difference between angst and tragedy? How can I avoid turning a tragic story into a angst fest? Thank you.
nimblesnotebook-blog

Angst: Something bad has happened and the character reflects on it (in a “woe is me” way) until they reach a realization or until they accept what happened or until they ”turn a new leaf” (The Catcher in the Rye or that one contestant on Chopped who puts all the blame on the basket ingredients instead of their own choices and then never shuts up about it).

Tragedy: A sequence of events that lead to a tragedy due to the actions of the characters (Romeo and Juliet or that one contestant on Chopped who works really hard and makes the best tasting dish of the round but who forgets one of the basket ingredients and gets chopped even though another contestant served raw red onions to Scott Conant).

Angst and tragedy are not mutually exclusive and some element of angst often appears in tragedy (Hamlet in Hamlet). Here are some tips on writing angst and here are some general tips on making sure the angst doesn’t take over:

  • Characters Should Be Active: In an angst-ridden story, the characters tend to be passive. They sit around and reflect on what happened to them. Then just as they’re getting up to sit somewhere else, something else happens to them. They just sit there and take it. And then they reflect on it some more. The reader cares less about these angst-ridden characters. When the characters make choices that actively affect the plot in ways that lead to more tragedy, the tragedy becomes more heart-breaking for both the character and the reader. 
  • A Range of Emotions: Angst is mostly filled with anger and self-pity. Tragedy has a wide range of emotions. If every scene reads as angry, self-pitying, or self-reflecting, you’re moving toward angst territory.
  • The End: A necessary trait of a tragedy is that it ends in tragedy. Angst often ends when the protagonist is starting to heal from whatever happened. In tragedy, there is often little time for characters to start this process because the tragedy happens throughout the story, not before. So if you find that the tragedy is all done and you’ve got a whole chapter of characters reflecting on what just happened, take it out. The story should end with the end of the tragedy, not with the start of the aftermath.
933
tau1tvec

The year is 2033.

You fire up your iPad and tap The Sims 5 icon, and immediately a pop up splashes across your screen advertising “The Sims 5 Season 573829283 Sul Sul Pass” for $39.99. You just spent $4.99 on a few hairs and some ugly jeans the other day, but you’d be damned if your sims can’t wear those ugly jeans to a restaurant, which are just now being added after 7 years.

You tap a button to buy the Sul Sul Pass, the app immediately crashes and uninstalls itself from your device.

penig

Meanwhile, I load my Sims 2 game. It took me a week to get the settings just right on the machine I had to buy after my Windows 7 computer bit the dust, but she plays like a dream now and I just installed some new CC I'm eager to try.

withlovefromsimtown

I'll fire up my Frankenstein computer, that's probably going to be Linux-based when Steam quits on me in 187 days, & post some queer TS2 content for everyone that's left here.

1074