All The “weird” Content On Tiktok Feels So Fabricated And Performative. Whereas On Tumblr You’ll

It’s insane to me that people still make fun of folks just for being in certain fandoms or liking certain things

Seriously your ‘liking things beyond the norm is cringe’ mentality isn’t going to end up boosting your self esteem in the end.

Your just gonna end up feeling shitty once you realize your a human being and enjoy things too

Like, I get making fun of people who enjoy things that are legit harmful. That’s valid, but being a dick to someone just for enjoying something that you don’t personally enjoy is so legit pathetic it hurts

We’re literally all trying to feel like we have a place in this world. We find people with common interests and enjoy their company while discussing those interests. It’s normal it’s healthy, who the fuck are you to judge someone for it

I’m real sick of certain stuff today sorry for the rant

All of the above.

I also want to add that it is extremely unnecessary to tag your main character as being in a relationship with every other character if it's not a massive poly situation.

For example: if your fic is Tav/Astarion, you don't need to also tag it as Tav/Shadowheart Tav/Gale Tav/Wyll Tav/Karlach etc etc. If you want to indicate that those characters will be in the fic, you can tag with just their names or with Tav & [character].

There is an issue in this community with misstagged fics on AO3, specifically in the FxF tags. I don't know if it's going to reach the actual people or not but I'm still going to put this here:

A lot of MxM and FxM are tagging FxF ships in the main relationship category despite the ship itself only being written in the background.

Which is a problem because when you go into your ship tag to find fics of your ship, a ridiculous amount of them are off topic. And while yes you can lower that amount significantly by filtering and tag exclusion, AO3 has a built in feature that is made to avoid this.

I am going to use the Shadowzel tag for that because it's the most popular FxF ship on there and it's also one of the most misstagged rn. As of right now, there is 607 fics in the Shadowzel tag without filter. If you restrict the search to only include FxF, you are down to 397 fics. That is more than a third gone!

And it gets rid of some shadowzel content as well, so it's either you filter that out or you have to scroll through a tag where 1 out of 3 fics are about Astarion, Gale, Halsin, etc instead of the ship you looked up.

If your fic, let's take for example a Tav x Astarion, has either consistent mention of Shadowheart x Lae'zel, the most popular wlw ship, or has them in the background as support characters, or even just mentions them as a funny little wink and you want to make sure your readers know they are in here, you do not use the relationship tag! You go down to the additional tags and add "Minor Lae'zel/Shadowheart (Baldur's Gate)".

Unless the pairing you are tagging is the main focus or have a significant role and spotlight on them, you should not use the relationship tag! It clogs the feed for no reason, AO3 is not a website where you have to advertise your posts to the most tags possible.

Adding a visual for clarity:

Can we all please acknowledge that Brittany Murphy was an extremely talented actor with an absolutely impressive range? And that she also had an amazingly kind and sweet personality?

I mean, can you imagine any of the films she was in with someone else in her roles? Clueless, Cherry Falls, 8 Mile, Girl Interrupted, Prophecy 2, Riding in Cars with Boys, Uptown Girls, etc.? Didn't think so. She made those roles. Those movies would have been made so much less by her absence. Even when she was given roles that had no depth or nuance, she gave it depth and nuance through her performance.

While we're at it, let's also acknowledge how horribly she was treated by the media. Like, tabloids just made up stories about her being an addict, having an eating disorder, being difficult on set. None of that was true. But she was constantly hounded about it and it was devastating for her mental and physical health. All of these lies became the common perception of her. People just accepted it all as truth.

She was an all-around wonderful person and artist. But she was destroyed by assholes deciding that she was an easy target. Even when she died, these vultures made up shit about how she OD'ed (she didn't) or died of an ED (she didn't). They couldn't even let her rest in peace.

I keep hoping that someday we'll stop letting media outlets do this to women, but I keep getting shown that there is no end to it. As long as people are getting "tea" they'll keep letting women, and even young girls, get victimized and traumatized.

I am really tempted to try to take an inventory of all the books I own. It'd be useful for me to keep track of what I have so I don't accidentally get duplicates. And it'd be kind of neat to post it here because I love to see what people have in their libraries.

But.....

I own over 300 books, at least. Probably a lot more. And, due to limited shelf space, I kind of have them stashed everywhere around my house.

It would be a huge undertaking for me just to make a full list of them all. And then organize that list. And I know myself. I would absolutely include details about what specific edition I have. Have I finished them? For the unread ones, have I just not started them yet, or are they dnf? And on and on and on....

So much effort and I'm not sure if I can really commit to it

God I hate economists. Especially when they put get their stupid stinky hands on sociology

people are absolutely EVIL about the boundaries of “picky eaters”. no, they do not have to try it. yes, they can know they don’t like it without having eaten it before. no, they probably have not suddenly grown a taste for the food they’ve said they hate. no, they probably are not going to like it in the Special Way This One Place Cooks It. yes, you are being a bad friend if you try to “trick” them into eating it anyway

Good News!

I'm feeling much better now and will be able to stream tonight!

I hope you join me as I battle my way across Montana in a rather strange quest to bang a cult leader. I'm talking, of course, about Far Cry 5.

Live at 11:30 EST

Okay I need to talk about Dragon Age.

Specifically, I need to talk about Cailan and Loghain.

So Cailan is presented to us as, well, a glory-seeking dumbass who refuses to listen to the advice of those around him. And that's how he's seen and treated by fans. I'm going to say that's wrong, but I do think it's incomplete.

There's some crucial information that we're given at Ostagar that tends to be overlooked. Ostagar is the fourth battle against the darkspawn. So Cailan has already fought three battles against them by the time we meet him. And nothing in those battles suggested any actual intent or tactics from the darkspawn. No signs of organization. Nothing to suggest an archdemon.

So to me, it does make sense that Cailan isn't taking the idea of a Blight too seriously at this point. All he has to suggest a Blight is Duncan's word. And Grey Wardens have been shown repeatedly to be secretive almost to the point of self sabotage. No one outside of the Wardens knows how they are connected to the darkspawn and can literally hear the archdemon.

We also see that Cailan's other advisors are telling him that it isn't a Blight. There's also the fact that the Wardens were banished from Fereldan for years for revolting against the king. It's only relatively recently that they've been allowed back.

So, while yeah, Cailan's kind of a dumbass, it makes perfect sense that he isn't buying into the idea of a Blight. If you remember that he is operating without the information the audience likely has at this point, he doesn't really have a reason to think it's anything more than an unusually large hoard. And he is taking the perceived threat seriously. He has only seen evidence of a large hoard, and he is responding appropriately to the threat of a large hoard.

It was not his fault that the Wardens won't tell anyone anything.

Now, onto Loghain. First off, fuck this guy. I hate this character so much. He's so fucking boring and I couldn't stand it.

With that out of the way, he fully and intentionally betrayed Cailan at Ostagar.

I will agree that retreating was the most tactical choice and that sending in his troops would not have swung the battle. It would have just been even more slaughter.

But I don't think that's why he retreated. He retreated to ensure that Cailan would die, and that he would be the one who got to control the narrative of what happened. It also made sure that he would still have all of his troops, giving him the advantage in the civil war since the other nobles lost so many troops at Ostagar.

He was also pretty fucking stupid. I mean, the guy went and found the one noble that absolutely everyone else hated and fully allied himself with him. Dumb. Just fucking dumb. Literally everyone other than Cousland hates Howe, and Loghain chooses him to be his right hand man. Honestly, dude probably would have won over a lot more nobles if he hadn't done that.

I don't really know how to end this. But, yeah, Cailan isn't as stupid as he's treated, and Loghain sucked so hard.

I think I'm done with podcasts made by men

I love listening to podcasts while I work. Especially ones related to history, film, and literature.

And damn near every time I try listening to ones that are made by men, I end up hitting a point where I have to stop listening and switch to something else. There's always a point where they say something that is so ignorant, blatantly sexist, etc., that I just can't take it.

Often times it's the host buying into a very male-centered lens of interpreting whatever it is they're discussing. And, you know, that's kind of expected. They're men. They're viewing things as men. I get that and I'm usually willing to just roll my eyes and move on. But then it keeps happening, or gets much worse than what can be excused by simple ignorance. And then I can't just roll my eyes anymore. I just want to start yelling. And that's not a good energy to have while I'm trying to do my job. So I switch over to something else.

A good example of this happened today. I was listening to a podcast called History by Hollywood. I found it because I'm a huge fan of History Buffs on Youtube. Comparing historical fiction to the actual history is fascinating to me. I love learning about the real event and how it's translated into fiction. But...it got bad. Real fucking bad.

Now, I can't place all the blame on the creators of HbH. They had guests who do a podcast that I think is called Green Screen, which discusses films through an environmental lens. And I definitely will not be listening to that podcast after hearing them today.

The episode was about Gorillas in the Mist, which is biopic about Dr. Dian Fossey. If you don't know who Dian Fossey is, look her up. She was one of the group known as the Trimates, sometimes called Leakey's Angels. The group consisted of three women who were expert primatologists: Birute Galdikas, who studied orangutans; Jane Goodall, possibly the most well known of the three, who studied chimpanzees; and Fossey herself, who studied gorillas. I would love to write hundreds of pages about how awesome and unbelievably badass these women are/were. Seriously, learn about these women if you haven't already. They are amazing.

Anyway, the episode was about Dr. Fossey. My first issue is that, despite her PhD, they never once referred to her with her proper title. This is upsettingly common with women who have earned doctorates. Men never want to call them Doctor. It frustrates me to no end. But that's not nearly the worst of it. They went on to discuss how she became pregnant twice during her time in Rwanda. She chose to abort both pregnancies because she did not want pregnancy or motherhood to interfere with her work with the gorillas. One of the GS guys commented on this saying "I suppose her reasons could be considered valid." Um, excuse me? First of all, why do you think that you get to decide whether or not she had valid reasons? You don't. Second, of course her reasons are valid. Whatever a woman's reasons are for having an abortion are valid. She's the only one who gets to make that decision. So fuck right off with that. Sorry for getting a bit heated here, but that really pissed me off. There was no need for a comment like that. Especially since it makes it sound like he doesn't actually think her reasons are valid, but is scared of catching heat so tried to sugarcoat it.

Moving on, TW: rape, they also got into the fact that Dr. Fossey stated that she was repeatedly raped by soldiers in 1966 over the course of two weeks. People freaking love to claim that this is "disputed" or "exaggerated" and some go as far as to claim that it was an outright lie. Why? Because she originally claimed that she was treated well and then escorted to the border. Later on, she admitted that she was actually beaten and raped. I'm not going to delve too far into this because a) this post is already way longer than I intended, and b) I will get SO MAD. For the sake of brevity, I'm just going to say that I believe that she was raped, and that she initially lied because she was not ready for this information to become public. The hosts however...well, they'd like to claim that they didn't come down on either side of this "debate" and simply presented facts. But they totally don't think she was raped. They went on and on about all the reasons that she would have lied about being raped, such as political clout, publicity, propaganda, and other dumb reasons. But just couldn't seem to think of any reason that she would have lied about not being raped. Gotta love how men are always able to come up with fifty million reasons why women would make false accusations. It's absolutely not in any way revealing how they think of women.

They also got into the admittedly shitty things that Dr. Fossey did during her time in Rwanda. She wasn't perfect, and she did do some rather bad things. Her approach to conservation work was very much steeped in a colonialist mindset. I'm not about to deny that. And they did do a good job of explaining some of the more overlooked facts of poaching--most African poachers aren't cartoon villains who want to destroy nature. Many are farmers who are killing animals that threaten their crops and/or livestock. And then they get offered lots of money to do it. It's not a simple issue, and doesn't have a simple solution. I don't have a problem with them addressing this, and I'm glad that they did. However, and this is a pretty big HOWEVER, they also didn't discuss any of the great things she did. She saved a huge number of gorillas. She helped improve the Rwandan economy. She fought against multiple colonialist organizations trying to exploit Rwanda and it's wildlife. She helped to revolutionize the field of primatology. There's so much that we know now that we only know because of her. They also decided that the fact that she's a heavily revered and respected figure in Rwanda was worth a few sentences and that was it.

They referred to her as cold and unfeeling multiple times, largely due to her relationship with Bob Campbell, who was married when they met. Apparently the fact that she didn't stick with him for her whole life means that she's cold and uncaring. Ugh. I just fucking can't with this.

And the cherry on top, they made jokes about her murder. Yep. Dr. Fossey was horribly and brutally murdered with a machete in December of 1985. And they apparently think that's funny. Now, I know that some of the people who were close to Dr. Fossey have also made jokes regarding her death. However, there are several Grand Canyon-sized differences between someone using humor to cope with the death of someone they loved, and some assholes with a podcast making jokes about the brutal murder of a woman they never met. They also said that it doesn't matter who killed her or if they're ever caught. Which...no? It very much matters who snuck into this woman's home in the middle of the night and used a machete to brutally murder her. It very much matters if this person is caught. I can't even imagine trying to say that it doesn't matter if an actual murderer is ever caught.

All of this goes into a huge problem when it comes to studying history, especially the history of science. Women are always scrutinized more heavily, always criticized with more vitriol, and always have their enormous accomplishments either left out entirely or pushed to side. I almost never see male scientists given this treatment. Edison comes close, but he always gets quite a bit of "Yeah, he was awful, but let's not forget all the awesome things he did!" Women however get "Yeah, she did a few cool things for science, but let's not forget that she had an abortion!"

I just can't handle this shit anymore. If you managed to get all the way to the end of this wall of text (yay) please recommend me some good history/literature podcasts created by women. I will love you so much.

I have no idea how old your book rant post is, but here I am, about to be your problem

I HATED THE SUNBEARER TRIALS

Yeah, okay cool, it’s a book with a trans author and trans main character. EVERYTHING ELSE WAS TRASH

It starts off great, with the MC graffitiing (spelling???) a wall with two birds and then he never does anything interesting again in favor of pining over/think about/hate a guy from his childhood that was mean to him once ten years ago. Before you go thinking the MC’s hatred of him is justified, just know all that is because the guy pulled a mean girls and said YOU CANT SIT WITH US a literal decade ago.

His best friend is a part of a group he hates, but it’s okay because she’s one of the good ones

And now: The cardinal sin

THIS BOOK IS MARKETED AS PERCY JACKSON MEETS THE HUNGER GAMES YET HAS NO CHARACTER DEATHS AT ALL AND SAYS **** IN THE FIRST LINE

WHO IS THIS FOR????????

I adore Hunger Games, but I mean it when I say that if I could travel back in time to stop those books from ever being published, I would do it in a heartbeat just so I would never have to see a book marketed as "X meets Hunger Games" ever again.

If you put even the slightest hint of competition in a YA or YA-adjacent book, it gets called Hunger Games. I could write a full rip-off of Bring It On, but the competition element would guarantee that it would be marketed as an HG style book.

The same thing happens with Mean Girls. Does your book have teenage or early 20s girls being in proximity to each other? Well it's Mean Girls now.

And it's really not doing these books any favors. Cause people pick them up expecting something in line with the brutality and messaging of HG, and end up disappointed as hell when that's not what they get.

I think publishing houses might actually be my mortal enemy

⬆️ Me fighting publishers for all the bs they pull (especially Red Tower - hate them)