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I think about this scene a lot

#discworld

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breq is my role model not just because she's capable and composed and adaptable, but also because she doesn't let any of these fine traits stop her from fucking shit up at a moment's notice

#imperial radch #she's the source of everyone's problems BECAUSE she's the smartest one in the room

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You know, for someone who supposedly hates SecUnit, Gurathin sure was quick to come help it in Fugitive Telemetry.

I do love me a good enemies-to-reluctant-allies.

#murderbot diaries #well well well

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I feel the need to periodically remind people that Idiocracy is a eugenics movie.

One of the things that eugenicists believe is that it is bad for society when the “wrong people” breed.

The entire premise of the movie is that “stupid people” kept having kids while “smart people” didn’t have kids, and it ruined society because stupid genes propagated while smart genes died out. This is eugenics propaganda.

I know people will read this and their response will be “actually it’s satire” but the movie isn’t satirizing eugenics. It’s satirizing anti-intellectualism, and consumerism, and it proposes eugenics as a solution.

When eugenics was first conceived, it was used as a way to justify inequality. The idea was that people who held privilege were able to do so because they were smarter and genetically superior to lazy and stupid people who don’t have privilege. Obviously this is bad and wrong, but it is also the core lesson of Idiocracy.

The movie literally ends with the main character becoming president and having “the smartest children in the world.” Because he and his wife have smarter genes than everyone else. The proposed solution for the things that Idiocracy is satirizing is for the smart people to have children that can be in charge of the world.

I know it’s fun to use this movie to dunk on anti-intellectualism and the MAGA movement, but we need to stop. When you quote and reference this movie you are spreading eugenics propaganda.

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This starts out as a nice gesture, then quickly becomes absolutely ridiculous.

1,024 dice. Man.

#CHAOS #BEAUTIFUL CHAOS

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captchas have always had a frustrating element of subjectivity to them, the annoyance of such twisted writing or garbled audio that it could often be unpleasant to solve at the best of times (let alone if you had some sort of visual or audio impairment)

but this latest iteration of captchas that is "okay which of these AI generated images does the computer most think looks like another AI generated image of something that's probably a cat (???)" really takes it to a new level

#AI #captcha

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me in planning stages of writing: this fucks. this is gonna be so fun.

me the minute i sit down to write: language is an unwieldy cudgel we use to beat the human experience to death in an attempt at ever communicating fully with another being. i wish intelligent life had never evolved. i want to go back to the cell stage like in spore

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and then he woke up

#wolf 359 #eyes emoji

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#sailor moon

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fuck this 'mortifying ordeal of being known' shit i want a spaceship that perceives every one of my actions and understands me on a level deeper than i know myself

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Do you have any opinions on Scholomance?

I do! I like it a lot. I really enjoyed all three books, blitzed through them easily and was much more excited to see how the plots unfolded than I'm used to these days, as a jaded adult, and I also really appreciated them as works of craft.

Especially the first one, I spent the whole time being all 'wow!' at how simple it was. So easy to read, but no waste. You really need to know what you're doing, to get that kind of pared-down elegance of form to work and still fit so much content in.

Like these are dense, there's a fantastic stylistic minimalism that allows El's character all the space it needs to breathe by making absolutely every other thing and person in the whole novel also do character work for her, which is exactly where the first person voice shines.

Also great use of character perspective to make the pacing feel really natural, so the fact that the first book takes three weeks, the second book takes one year, and the third book is like. Five or so incredibly stressful days spread out over the course of a few weeks? Doesn't feel imbalanced.

I actually got distracted from the story a few times by noticing the strength of Novik's technique. 😂 This is a me problem, in itself it's the opposite of distracting. Very low-profile.

I think the Scholomance is a great example of how far you can go in specfic when you aren't cringing from the label 'derivative,' because the Scholomance books feel very fresh ad clean specifically because nothing in them is concerned with standing out as 'original,' whatever that's supposed to mean, only with being well-executed and suitable to its task.

Hm, maybe that's where Liesel was born, the intersection of the efficient narrative style and the vast proportion of the story that concerns the maximization of utility and the instrumentalization of persons by themselves and others, and the forces that incentivize these behaviors. Or maybe she's just the narrative counterweight to Orion 'Head Empty' Lake lmao. How's that for a principle of balance, Galadriel?

I really did enjoy how beautifully it was laid out, over and over, in dozens of shades of humanity, how no matter where you go in an exploitative system almost everyone is being driven by the same survival instincts.

Because I don't think I've ever seen made so cleanly clear why you just can't expect any person or small group of people, no matter their level of goodwill or status, to unmake one of these systems from the inside; how it's not a matter of people being bad but of every single person being very...small.

And then not retreating into the idea of a person who is Big coming and breaking the cruel system from the outside as some kind of panacea, because 1) that is terrible, even if it's necessary and done in the best way possible and 2) that's not a sustainable answer to anything. Getting a balance between the protagonist being able to effect change and not subscribing to the great man theory of history can be really tricky!

Also did I mention, I love El, and I love most of the cast, even the dreadful ones. How am I going around with this many feelings about Li Shanfeng who doesn't appear until the actual climax?

The romance murdered me a bit, but it took up no more space than it absolutely needed to do its job, and I respect that. Also I appreciated Orion as a love interest; Novik has a slight record at this point of a version of that style of male love interest who's like a caricature of Mr. Darcy but old, which was shaping up to be my least favorite thing about her body of work.

...Orion is kind of like if you took the human king from Spinning Silver and gave him an alignment flip come to think of it, so he's not coming out of nowhere. Lmao.

Which reminds me (re: romance character typing) I've heard Novik didn't want it to be known she was astolat, which this series has renewed my sympathies if so. Because if I were a published novelist I wouldn't want people going 'you know, that resolution was really emotionally satisfying! reminds me of that fic she wrote where optimus prime and megatron get stuck in a hole underground and hatefuck about it.'

I don't even like Transformers. That fic almost made me cry. Actually I suspect it reads better if you don't like Transformers because I'm sure it does not give a shit about canon.

Anyway, whoever pointed out that one of the things El has going on is she's Enoby (and we're going to sit down and explore what the true reason to put your middle finger up at preps is, and what are some constructive ways to channel that socioeconomic wrath, and what it means that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism) was right and I'm not entirely over that either.

Fucking love El's mom as a character. Spectacular level of parent relevance and usefulness. A+.

Aadhya and Liu are also characters who fucking delivered.

Re: minimalism though, I laughed at the start of The Golden Enclaves when I realized that none of the enclaver characters who'd gotten development in the the first two books were from London, the enclave El was theoretically shooting for when we met her.

#scholomance #yeah this series is like #REALLY GOOD #the most impressive YA i've read in a while #works great on its own merit #but it's in conversation with so many things and so CLEVER about it

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things to ask yourself when designing a female character:

how much blood is she covered in

are her eyes filled with madness

can she rip things to shreds with her fingernails

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“gay rights!” - Dash Baxter

#danny phantom #wow we've come so far since 2004

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Doctor vs Master in terms of who I'd rather have as an enemy is Master all the fucking way. The thing about The Master is their number one priority is not their moral code or revenge or domination or being a villain no their number 1 priority no matter what is being high camp. If the master was after me I would just clap to lower the lights and make "masochism tango" start playing and then during the dance I'd cuff and collar them with some ridiculously strong stuff and at the end they'd be like "mon chéri...it seems you have foiled me for now, but we shall meet again" and then they'd kiss me hand and I probably would have at least a few years before they show up again. Whereas if you're not already in a deeply codependent situation ship and you piss off The Doctor their number one priority is Fucking Getting You. You can fuck off to the year 6 billion in the 13th dimension and they'll still find your ass and be like "I tripled your lifespan and also gave you anterograde amnesia so everyday you will wake up with fewer and fewer loved ones but the grief will be brand new" like jesus christ man i don't wanna deal with that

#doctor who

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reylos crying on twitter because Adam Driver explicitly confirmed that Bendemption was never originally in the plans for Kylo....this is justice for the last 8 years, actually

#star wars