#I would just passively scroll Reddit | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tinted-skies · 2 years

Text

small confessions with dream

Mark `~ Mark was blabbing about how good Justin Bieber's new song was, commenting on how perfect the lyrics were and how he couldn't wait to learn its melody on the guitar. You, however, just sat there, passively nodding, not matching his energy at all.

"You haven't listened to the song yet, have you?" He asked, finally noticing your lack of excitement.

"I just don't really care about him that much to be honest..."

Mark's jaw dropped, making you genuinely worried that he would dislocate it.

After the initial shock he'd be chill about it, respecting your opinion. But once you show the tiniest bit of interest in the artist, you can bet he'll show up a day later with a playlist (or maybe even a mixtape) of his favourite songs.

Renjun `~ It was around midnight when Renjun sent you a reddit post. OP claimed to have seen a real ovni, which made you giggle.

You joked around the topic with your boyfriend, believing his comments were just as sarcastic as yours. But soon enough, you realised that wasn't exactly the case.

"I don't believe in aliens, though..." You confessed, which lead to him leaving the text app. Was he really leaving you on read over this-

And in a milisecond he was back, flooding you with articles, videos and podcasts with "genuine proof" of alien life.

After that night, Renjun made it his life mission to make you see his point of view. And it honestly didn't even surprise you when you once watched him scroll on his phone only to find out that he was part of alien stan twitter.

Jeno `~ "I'm never, ever, doing this again." A voice echoed, followed by the front door slamming shut.

Yet another friend who gave up on being Jeno’s workout partner... You couldn't really blame them though, you had heard that things could get intense during bike day. In Jaemin's own words, Jeno ran "that shit like the military" and to be honest you didn't even know whether you found that insanely attractive or just straight up scary.

After giving his friend a very dramatic eye roll, his eyes dropped on you, the look on his eyes shifting from annoyance to... determination?

No, no, no, no no. No way in hell you would "tagg along" in his "fun bike rides". You knew better than to fall for that.

"I don't even know how to ride a bike, so don't get any ideas." You revealed, hoping that would save you ass. But much to your dismay your confession had the exact opposite effect, instanly leading to him dragging you outside to teach you.

The days after, you wouldn't get a break, him forcing you to go on mandatory bike dates since they were "good for practice".

Haechan `~ It was around 4 in the morning, meaning that everyone at the dorms was asleep. Everyone except you, who stood in the kitchen, water glass in hand.

The dead silence of the night was soon interrupted by the sound of someone tiredly dragging their feet. Haechan entered the kitchen, rubbing his eyes while letting out a yawn. It took him a while to spot you, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion once he did so.

"Can't sleep when I'm stressed..." You explained quietly, to which he nodded understandingly. Although never having faced the stress of finals, he could imagine it to be similar to the stress he felt during comeback season.

"You know what I normally do when I can't sleep?" He whispered walking closer to you, voice rough as he had just woken up.

"Play overwatch." He answered his own question.

"I've never played overwatch, though..." You confessed, your words making Haechan smile softly.

He had waited for this moment for a very long time, the two loves of his life were finally meeting and he suddenly felt like he was on the clouds.

He guided you to his room, turned on his computer and taught you how to play. You played in the dark of his bedroom until the sun started peaking through the courtains.

Jaemin `~ He could swear agreeing to come pick you up had been the best decision of his life.

You had just got out of your best friend's party and were a bit tipsy. Jaemin had never really seen you like this before but boy was he in for a treat. He had always found you extremely entertaining but the drinks seemed to have taken away your inhibitions, complete nonsense coming out of your mouth. He almost had to stop the car a few times from how hard he was chuckling.

Right now you were ranting about how hard relationships were and how happy you were for not being in one.

"Hate to break it to you, baby, but we're dating." He interrupted.

"Oh- yes! You're right! About that- don't get me wrong, I really, really loooove PDA..." He glanced at you curiously before looking back at the road, intrigued.

"However-... I prefer it when we're alone." You concluded your confession with hesitation, not wanting to hurt his feelings, but Jaemin could only smile at your words.

"Damn, I always knew English wasn't your biggest strenght but you know what PDA stands for, right?"

"Of course I do" You answered dramatically, taking his words to heart. "Public display of affection." You stated proudly.

You really were a mess tonight and if you kept talking, then he was sure his cheeks would start hurting from smiling so much. You really were going to be the death of him...

Chenle `~ You and Chenle had plopped on the couch after having lunch together and had no intentions of getting up any time soon. Both of you barely moved the entire evening, just lazily scrolling through your phones.

Getting bored of every other app on your phone, you clicked on twitter. When you saw a tweet announcing Seventeen's new comeback you let out an excited squeal, catching Chenle’s attention. He raised an eyebrow at you but decided not to question it, simply smiling at your cuteness before going back to the game on his phone.

The way he looked at you had made you a bit shy, but all of that was forgotten when you came across a certain fancam.

Your eyes slightly widened at the sight, your boyfriend really was a great performer, no matter how many times you watched him on stage, you would always find it mindblowing. Not to mention this choreo had always been one of your favourites and damn, you really were a sucker for his black hair...

Before you knew it, you had seen the damned video 4 times already. It was muted but you could swear you could listen to it perfectly in your head.

Nevertheless, you decided to unmute it, instanly regretting it when the sound blasted off your phone. Slightly panicking you paused the fancam but, much to your dismay, Chenle had already recognized the song.

This made him move closer to you, glancing at your phone only to confirm his suspicions. He stared at you with a look of disbelief, nodding in disappointment.

"For fuck's sake, Y/N, it's been 2 years already! Get over it!" He shouted jokingly before getting up and leaving your side.

"I just think Ridin' was your best era, okay?" You called out just as loud, confessing dramatically what he already knew.

Jisung `~ He hated morning recording sessions. He had to go on the SUV all alone and sing the same lines over and over again while barely awake. Today's session had wasted 3 hours of his day, but fortunately he was now finally free.

Jisung arrived to the dorm only to find you already there, on the kitchen table with two cups of coffee and a pile of pancakes on a plate. He awed at the way you not only had gotten up super early, but also had been waiting for him so you could eat breakfast together.

At that moment he swore you were the best friend anyone could ever ask for.

"What's all of this?" He asked as he sat in the chair in front of you. You felt yourself softening upon hearing his raspy voice.

You and Jisung were very close but it wasn't often that you'd be so straightforward at expressing your affection towards each other.

That being said, you were truly taking a risk by setting this whole scene up, which didn't go unnoticed by your best friend, who couldn't help but wonder if your actions had any kind of second intentions. And although you didn't really want to admit it... deep down you guessed they did.

"Ahmn..." You pondered your next words. "I just like you, I guess..." You shrugged it off, deciding to keep the situation nonchalant.

Your sudden confession was subtle (and painfully honest), yet broad enough to leave the boy wondering if your words meant something more. And they did, but he didn't have to know it just yet.

Little did you know that Jisung was fighting the urge to reveal that he felt the same exact way about you. <3

665 notes · View notes

marsti · 1 year

Note

you said ask so here I am in the ask box like a good girl u3u but I'd love to hear you talk about seer of void reddit (mostly cause that's my classpect as well~)

ok so seer of void reddit!! the reason why i chose this is because reddit is an information hub, and a lot of people basically use it as a web browser? you can find anything you want by just searching something and appending "reddit" at the end, which definitely puts it in the light/void axis.

so how did i chose void over light? simple. a while back reddit changed their slogan. it's no longer "the front page of the internet", which is HEAVILY light coded, now it's "dive into anything" which at least to me is very voidy. like you know, a deep dive! to the unknown depths of knowledge!

the reason why hes a seer is because:

1) reddit is a very passive site, a lot of it is just sitting back and scrolling through your favorite sub. even then the communities dont like... do much, you know? people on reddit just kinda vibe i feel like. they go on other sites to actually do stuff. for most people, you just kinda occasionally comment on stuff. even when posting... it's a hub but very few things are really NATIVE to reddit, if that makes sense.

2) most people who use the site dont even have an account! like i said, it's basically used as a web browser by most people. i dont even log onto reddit 99% of the time when im on it and that 1% is just so i can access nsfw subs. when you need to solve an issue with your computer, or youre looking for a site to stream your animus on, youre not like... actively using the site. in that way it's a passive tool for knowledge, like the seer class!

3) it's a joke because socialstuck reddit? definitely has seen some shit. this guy is so fucking tired. can you imagine what itd be like to be the anthropomorphic representation of reddit dot com?? it would be maddening. you would witness man-made horrors beyond your comprehension every single day. in that way seer of void evokes the idea of "looking into the abyss"!

hope that makes sense ahah

#ask #carrotquill #socialstuck #socialstuck reddit #classpect

83 notes · View notes

lakesbian · 4 months

Note

wrt what you said about worm opinions not being a fight; sometimes it reads like you and bloggers you're talking to have different aims in the fandom. people aren't always interested in being corrected (and feel extra defensive when it's in a reblog by someone with a large following like you have) and posts made about someone else without directly referring to them can occasionally come across as passive aggressive in a small fandom. directly stating if and when you don't want people to feel bad or offering to leave the topic be can help mitigate that if it comes up. you should blog how you want but it seems worthwhile to point out in case you find it helpful. you post a lot about reddit so if you were part of that big migration i wanted to note it since it can be easily confusing. feel free to disregard this if it's too much meddling

okay this is a lot of sentences about something that Isn't worm analysis so i'll be nice to everyone scrolling and put it under a cut

HASFDAKSFDSLS i don't post a lot about reddit no. i post a lot about alec, the only times i mention r/parahumans are when i'm 1. making everyone who doesnt have the stomach for one million posts about e88 in a row look at the rare good art that got posted there or 2. showing everyone a funny post title. i also feel like you might be misremembering that a Big reddit migration ever happened because while i havent been here long enough to remember everything i feel like the environment would b a lot more insufferable if it had? anyway

re "posts made about someone else without directly referring to them can occasionally come across as passive aggressive in a small fandom" - posts i make inspired by disagreeing w/ someones opinion with a direct tag to the person i saw have that opinion could be taken as aggressive/uncomfortable, because people leaving a random comment of a pretty generic opinion somewhere do not generally want to be dragged onto a stage for an impromptu debate! it's far more reasonable to just post my thoughts on a paraphrased version of the generic opinion without specifically shouting out whoever i most recently saw it from. (if i wanted to address precise phrasing or details of a point vs just bouncing off it, that's when i directly respond to the original text.) given that you also literally just said "people aren't always interested in being corrected (and feel extra defensive when it's in a reblog by someone with a large following like you have)," i feel like you should be able to understand this pov--it's extremely contradictory to imply that i often shouldn't directly correct people, but also that i should always explicitly shout out the person responsible for an opinion i disagree with

as for "people aren't always interested in being corrected (and feel extra defensive when it's in a reblog by someone with a large following like you have)," i have a couple notes:

i've been told i have a large following a few times but tbh i still genuinely do not see it--it was really only some of my first wormposts that got a notable amount of notes, at this point i feel like i've lost enough followers from having largely very specific posts (alec <3) & from being opinionated about hot-button topics that i do not think i count as a Large Blog. per se. i'd actually posit that No blog on wormblr is large enough to invoke the risks of disagreeing w someone publicly as a large blogger (i.e. unintentionally siccing harassment on someone), but maybe there's something i'm missing there

literally all of the people i've publicly corrected about amy were well-known fandom mainstays at the least and considered actively foundational (especially on the much much larger reddits and discords) at most, while also being extremely well-known on tumblr. i frankly find it hard to imagine any of them feeling threatened by the wormblr alec guy disagreeing with them when their opinions on her are those that have been shared by vast portions of the fandom for far longer than i've been in it. in fact, i would guess that any defensiveness there is actually far more liable to be a result of being extremely unused to having viewpoints they see as ubiquitous challenged

in both of the most recent cases that i'm sure inspired this ask, the people i was reblogging from made maintagged posts directly quoting things i've said without explicitly stating they were from me (<- "this can occasionally come across as passive aggressive in a small fandom") to express their disagreement w/ those opinions--if they didn't want me to try offering corrections, and fairly politely phrased ones at that, they could've just not made a post starting a dialogue about the topics, yeah?

#ask

3 notes · View notes

laurensliminalspace · 11 months

Text

Searching for purpose with chronic illness

"There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life." Viktor E. Frankl

What’s the point of it all?

Have you ever wondered this before? Have you ever felt life was aimless or meaningless?

When you become chronically ill, it can create a crisis of meaning in one’s life as suddenly people often have to stop working, leave volunteer commitments, and severely curtail their socialising. Many have to let go of regular travel, study or active hobbies like sports, camping or hiking as well. How can we find a sense of meaning and purpose while living with a chronic illness or disability?

It can seem impossible at times, especially when you are stuck in bed for days and the best you can manage is passively scrolling through Reddit or watching Netflix. (Many people even find looking at screens or watching TV/movies too tiring, especially when their condition is severe!)

Being stuck at home and unable to do much can feel incredibly frustrating and lead to feelings of emptiness, boredom and meaninglessness. I have been there myself and it’s an extraordinarily difficult situation to face! It’s a totally natural and normal thing to feel given those circumstances, so it’s important to have self compassion first and foremost. It’s so important to validate and acknowledge these feelings before rushing to solve them. (For more resources on self compassion, I highly recommend Kristin Neff!)

When people think about finding a purpose, they often imagine something really big and life changing, like having children, volunteering in a third world country, or perhaps founding a charity. Alternatively, people may imagine that only people in helping professions (like nurses, doctors or psychologists) or those working for NGOs get to enjoy a deep sense of fulfilment in their day to day life. The rest of us are seemingly doomed to a mundane, meaningless treadmill of existence. Or are we?

While all of the above can certainly be wonderful and rewarding, most of us - especially those with disabilities or chronic illnesses - have to search for meaning in the small things. I really like this quote from Brene Brown:

“Joy comes to us in moments—ordinary moments. We risk missing out on joy when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary.”

I tend to find that joy and meaning are closely connected, and often feed into one another.

I fleshed out some of my thoughts recently about finding purpose, and came up with a model based on the metaphor of a tree.:

1. The roots of the tree symbolise our big picture purpose. For me personally, that looks like embodying the presence of the divine. Loving God and loving others. For someone who does not resonate with religion or spirituality, perhaps this could be described as the values you seek to embody such as love, integrity, compassion, authenticity, etc. Broader life themes such as embodiment, transformation and transcendence may inspire you.

2. The trunk of the tree represents our vocational calling and identity. This can include a number of areas like being an artist, a healer, a friend, a partner, a writer, a mystic, etc. Being a healer and a friend includes healing and befriending ourselves, not just helping others. For some people there might be one primary vocation but for most people there are multiple, and it may perhaps vary depending on their season of life.

3. The branches and leaves of the tree are the specific actions we take on a day to day basis. It could include praying with someone. Listening to a friend in need. Starting a Facebook page or discussion group. Creating an artwork or a song. Writing a blog post. Creating a YouTube video. What action can you take today that would make a difference to someone? What’s something simple and meaningful you can do this week?

If you are low on energy, it could just mean something as small as writing an uplifting comment on someone’s social media post. Sending someone a text to ask, “How are you?” Smiling at a neighbour down the road. Watering your houseplants. Playing with your cat. It might mean practicing simple forms of self care, as we are just as worthy of love as anyone else. Sometimes we make things more complicated than they need to be!

I would also highly recommend the blog and podcast “Go Gently: One Thing Today” which was created by Michael Nobbs, a man with ME/CFS. We can still have dreams and goals, but we may just have to adjust them somewhat to fit our current limitations. We will probably need to work on them more slowly and pace ourselves more carefully than before.

I wanted to share this perspective because it’s easy to feel like our lives lack purpose and meaning, when perhaps what we need to do is reframe what we are already involved in to see there is a deeper purpose and calling underlying it. Purpose and meaning have many layers and facets. There may also be new areas to explore which we never previously considered, and the great thing about the internet is that it opens up so many options and possibilities for housebound, chronically ill and disabled people.

Even those who are fully able bodied and healthy can learn from our experiences, as learning to find joy and meaning in the ordinary moments of life can truly benefit anyone. A slow, mindful approach can empower us to savour the simple pleasures and make the most of each day.

Perhaps purpose and meaning are much deeper than anything we do, and much more about who we are. The impact of the energy, presence and love we bring to each person and each moment of our lives should not be underestimated.

“We cannot all do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” ~ Mother Teresa.

Further Reading:

Healing The Purpose of Your Life by Dennis Linn, Sheila Fabricant Linn, Matthew Linn SJ.

How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers by Toni Bernhard

An Overview of Logotherapy (founded by Victor Frankl)

#purpose #meaning #calling #vocation #finding purpose #finding meaning #chronic illness #disabled #spoonie #me #cfs #fibromyalgia #mcas

0 notes

lavenderek · 3 years

Text

i have a thought to express, feel free to scroll past.

i’m gonna discuss rape and sexual abuse in this post. it’s also long because i don’t really have a conclusion, it’s just some thoughts.

so i was looking into that reality show that facilitated shane dawson’s horrible movie “not cool” and i stumbled across a reddit thread posted by someone who was a fan of his as a preteen. the OP alleged that shane’s content contributed to them developing some serious issues including body dysmorphia and the normalization of sexual behavior involving children.

some of the comments were in support and agreement, but a large amount of them were like, “where were your parents? it’s not shane’s job to police what you see online. it’s not his fault you were too young for his content.”

now, shane was well aware from the jump that his fans were mostly kids and teens - he talked about it multiple times - but that’s not what this post is about. this post is about that particular argument, which does not sit well with me.

it reminded me of a couple years ago when i made a very critical post about c*ptive prince.

pause: i want to make it crystal clear that i am not drawing a comparison between people who like cp and shane dawson. i’m not mad anymore, so i am not making this post making a value judgment on cp or fans of it, positive or negative.

specifically, i was really bothered by the way cp content was posted and shared with no mention of or reference to the actual material. people were calling it a queer romance. it was a little-known series by a little-known author, so there were no synopses anywhere online, only the summary you’d see on the back of the book. so people would seek out cp thinking it was a romance and be blindsided by the fact that, spoilers, the story is set in a fantasy world where child rape is a major tenet of society. the scenes are explicit, detailed, and many. it’s not a thing that happens once or twice and is a major plot point, it’s a thing that happens multiple times in every chapter and is just kind of a thing that’s going on. if you’ve ever read twilight, i would compare the presence of rape in cp to the presence of rain in twilight.

like, that’s how often it happened, that’s how it was treated. sometimes with indifference, sometimes with a negative opinion, sometimes it caused problems, bella talks about it every two pages. it is a very rapey series.

and people like, did not want to discuss this. they were like, “the characters decide the rape is bad in the end. and that’s not even what the story is about, it just happens in the story. i don’t know what to tell you.” like... people were not receptive to any kind of conversation about this topic lmfao, it was very touchy. they wanted to acknowledge that rape itself is bad, and then they wanted the subject closed.

now, why is this a problem? i read the books. there were parts i enjoyed, and there were parts i didn’t enjoy. i’m not gonna reread them, but i’m still game to talk about it. ultimately i wanted to be able to talk about books with a friend of mine, and while i was like, “yikes, this is a lot of rape, was not expecting the volume of rape,” it didn’t occur to me this would be a pervasive issue at all until a different friend of mine happened upon it. this other friend was a rape survivor, and i happened to know she would find this content very upsetting. when she said she was thinking of buying the book, i was like, “halt, you know what happens in it, right?”

nope! she didn’t. she saw cute fanart and a ficlet on her dash, somebody told her it was a queer romance. nowhere was there any indicator in summaries online or the posts she was seeing that the book would describe a person being drugged and sexually abused. she was pretty relieved that i’d warned her and shaken that that’s what happens in the books lmao. she would never have guessed. the cp fandom was made up of people who loved the main pairing, and they’d talk about them being in love and draw them being in love, and it felt like everybody was just acting like the rape wasn’t even present in the books lmao.

pause: i didn’t go in the tags. this is not representative of the fandom as a whole. this is just my and my friend’s experience of it as passive internetgoers.

people got uncomfortable and a little defensive if i brought it up. they’d agree to tag for cp, but if you don’t know what cp is about, that isn’t helpful information. like that post that’s like, “waterboarding at guantanamo bay sounds like a lot of fun if you don’t know what either of those things are” lmao. if you don’t know what cp is about, tagging for it just tells you what it’s called. and it very clearly ruined everyone’s fun if i talked about this.

so that’s what i was mad about, i was mad that i felt as though there was no recourse here, and i was mad because i felt like the cp fandom was the emperor’s new clothes. nobody was acting like it even existed and everybody got uncomfortable if i brought it up, like, i legitimately wondered at some point if i had somehow accidentally read a kinky rewrite of it, that the real version did not have rape in it and nobody knew what i was talking about. i felt like i was going crazy and i got shitty in the middle of the night one time, and wrote that post.

i ultimately deleted it, so i do not remember how it was worded; but i do recall that it was a venting post, it was not intended to reach a wider audience. i was not trying to convince anyone in that moment, i was just talking shit. so i can bet that it probably came across as very judgmental and unkind.

i made a bunch of people very angry with that post. somebody got thousands of notes by reblogging with an impassioned smackdown saying basically what those redditors were saying about shane - it’s not their job to police what people see online. it’s not their fault you were unprepared for cp.

i do not think this is a nuanced enough argument because i do not think it acknowledges that not all content is created equal.

i even got an anon ask in good faith saying, well, a huge trigger for me is body horror, and people will draw or reblog stuff with body horror in it, and i can’t hold that against them.

and like, no, you can’t, but body horror is not the same as rape or child sexual abuse. body horror isn’t the same as sex trafficking. right? like those things aren’t comparable in the way that i think the anon was wanting them to be. they were saying that both of these are common triggers that people would want tagged and be unable to move past in media, you know? and i get that, i got what they were saying.

kind of like that cartoonist who wrote a spooky horror comic a while ago and somebody sent them an ask being like, “that was really scary, you usually post fun comics, this was damaging, unfollowed :/” like obviously a stranger’s fear of spooky things is not something he should be expected to take on on his own blog lmao. i am deeply afraid of ghosts, by the way.

but according to rainn.org, 1 in 5 women experience rape in their lifetime. 1 in 5 women are not frightened by literal ghosts in their lifetime. 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 7 boys aren’t body horrored. body horror and ghosts aren’t used on a global scale as tools to control and abuse people and they do not have the same connotations of shame, degradation, and control. the things are not the same.

i don’t have an easy answer. i can’t wave my magic wand and make people not enjoy the rape erotica, nor was that my goal in the first place. i wasn’t clutching my pearls like, “how dare you! do not draw this art! think of the children!” and i don’t know how else i would have solved the problem, aside from having a weird disclaimer under your art of two dudes cuddling that says “warning, these dudes are from a book that’s got several thousand words of explicit rape in it, and i know that, you’re not the only one seeing that,” like that’s a lot and i get it.

i don’t have an easy answer because there isn’t one. i felt like “well, that’s not my problem” was an easy answer.

as i get older, the more responsibility i have as an adult online to maintain boundaries between me and minors, for example. i am not responsible for their internet experience and they can’t get mad at me for cussing or writing about gay werewolves on my blog, but i do have to be mindful of that context if i’m interacting with someone online. that’s where the complexity comes in. you can’t wash your hands of the context of the things you say and do online.

just how to solve these problems, i did not know then and i do not know now. i guess we take it on a case by case basis.

if you’re curious about shane dawson and his horrible movie, by the way, this guy did a few funny videos about the horrible movie and this guy did a not funny but comprehensive breakdown of shane and his career.

and i tried to tint my eyebrows for the first time the other day, i have red hair and my eyebrows are darker than my hair for some reason, so i tried to use an eyebrow tint to lift my brows just like, a shade, so be closer to my hair? but in doing this i discovered that my eyebrows are a mixture of red and brown?

so the red hairs lifted to a sunny orange, and the brown hairs stayed brown. so my eyebrows are fully like, calico right now. boom, orange juice, that’s life

#diary post #long post

11 notes · View notes

ehstarwar · 4 years

Text

flesh stays no farther reason (1/6)

Great, she thinks, another horny creep trying to entice young women to hop into bed with them for roughly 30 seconds.

She reads the post anyways.

Five times Ben looks for Rey and the one time she finds him.

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 5K

Read on AO3

Notes:

my brain at 2a.m., assuring me that it'll be a one-shot: for the lady, perhaps a salad?

me, 5,000+ words in and only on their first meeting: [chuckling] perhaps not

what's to come is still unsure

She sees it on Reddit.

She doesn’t normally scroll through the website (certainly not subreddits like this) but she’s bored and can only take the same Buzzfeed quizzes so many times.

She’s not sure what led her to this page, how the rabbit hole of the internet made her search r/mseekingfcorusant but here she was, scrolling through the disjointed thoughts of horny guys in her area.

Posted by u/droidwrangerl88

need hot girl to bang. serious inquiries only.

Posted by u/mycumtastelikesarlacc

Any girls in the Coruscant area looking to hook up this evening? 38M seeking mid-20sF. Will split hotel bill.

Posted by u/hotbountyhunter3483

any females interested in shredded guy for an evening? willing to meet for drinks b4 hand, and will pay for ur drinks if ur hot. (943) 349-9684 ;)

Rey finds it consistently astonishing how gross and vulgar men can be when hidden behind a screen. But she is scrolling on this page out of her own free will, so it does seem a little ‘pot-calling-the-kettle-black-ish.’ Just as her finger goes to press back to the home-screen, a tiny blue bubble appears at the top of the page, indicating that there has been a new post made. Great, she thinks, another horny creep trying to entice young women to hop into bed with them for roughly 30 seconds.

She reads the post anyways.

Posted by u/KyL0_R3N

31M seeking similarly aged F for the evening of 05/17. I have an important meeting on the 18th and sex the night before proves to a good luck charm for me. Nothing too crazy or obscene, fairly vanilla to start off with, but willing to go further based on her desires.

Something in Rey clenches.

It’s by far the most eloquently phrased way of asking for sex that she’s seen thus far. He seems straightforward, which is refreshing, but she knows that the best of psychopaths are good at hiding their true intention.

She clicks to his profile.

He seems interested in pretty common threads. Cooking tips, best laundromats in Coruscant, Galaxy Battles discourse; all innocuous and nothing to indicate he would chop up whoever responds to his post. Maybe that’s why she sends him a message.

From u/R3yoflight

why not just download tinder?

everyone on tinder is looking for sex too.

She bites her lip as she presses send. It’s not the best conversation starter, she’s aware, but their semi-introduction was from him posting about wanting to have sex to preform well in a meeting. Formalities can be forgone, in this particular situation. It’s not like she’s trying to impress him either; she didn’t message him to accept is offer, just merely because she’s curious.

There’s a pang of nervousness when she hears the notification sound out that he’s responded.

From u/KyL0_R3N

There’s too much preamble on dating apps.

Also, I’m looking to have sex, not to date.

It seemed more advantageous

to be straightforward.

From u/R3yoflight

hmmmm

i guess that makes sense

(also advantageous is worth 17 points in

scrabble, so kudos)

have you gotten many interested respondents?

From u/KyL0_R3N

You’re the first.

From u/R3yoflight

who says i’m interested???

From u/KyL0_R3N

Well, you are the one who messaged me?

Also, my post has been up for only a few minutes,

so you’re the first respondent in any capacity.

From u/R3yoflight

oooohhh i feel special ☺️✨

From u/KyL0_R3N

You’ve yet to tell me if you’re interested.

Is she?

Is she really considering letting Mr. KyL0_R3N fuck her after meeting him through a publicly placed internet post and knowing next to nothing about him?

From u/R3yoflight

maybe??

idk v much abt u yet

how do i know ur not a serial killer

or that u actually are who u say u are

which u haven’t yet

said who u are, that is

From u/KyL0_R3N

I’m 31M. I work in Coruscant at a tech company.

I’m 6’3, 190lbs. I’m not a killer in any capacity.

You haven’t told me anything about yourself,

which hardly seems fair.

From u/R3yoflight

24F, 5’6, i’m not telling u my weight

i work at an auto shop downtown so i can

kick ur ass if ur lying abt not being a killer

From u/KyL0_R3N

In order to kick my ass, we’d have to meet.

So, are you interested or not?

From u/R3yoflight

i shouldn’t be

From u/KyL0_R3N

I have the distinct feeling that you are.

Am I right?

From u/R3yoflight

...

yeah

He tells her his name is Kylo Ren, which she thinks sounds stupid and made up, but doesn’t press him. They hammer out some more details, agreeing to meet at the bar of a swanky hotel downtown first, and if all goes well, he’ll have a room reserved for them.

When she tells him that she can’t afford to pay any of the room, he dismisses her flippantly with a quick ‘I’ll take care of it’ that makes her chest feel tight.

They don’t talk much after that, only a message from her a few days before hand, making sure the plan was still on, and an affirmative from his side. But a few hours before they’re supposed to meet up, Rey gets a notification from him. It distracts her from the task at hand (precision shaving of her legs and… other parts), causing a knick on the back of her calf.

From u/KyL0_R3N

While I don’t think that we’ll be doing

anything that would require

a safe word, I’d like to have one in case.

From u/R3yoflight

i’ve never had a safe word.

what’s a good one?

From u/KyL0_R3N

It doesn’t have to be anything special.

We can stick to a traditional scale.

Green means you’re good.

Yellow means slow down.

Red means to stop entirely.

Does that work?

From u/R3yoflight

yeah thats good

why don’t you think that we won’t be doing

anything to justify a safe word?

you planning to go easy on me 😈

From u/KyL0_R3N

That depends, sweetheart.

How far are you willing to go?

Rey thinks for a moment. She should have some hard lines set, especially since he’s a total stranger. In fact, she shouldn’t be fucking a stranger at all. But she was in this far, so she may as well go all in.

From u/R3yoflight

i’m not super into choking but a lil breath play

is okay

no extreme bondage or degradation

maybe at some point but just… not now

anything in my ass will require a lot of work

before hand bc not much has been in there.

any hard no’s 4 u?

i’m on birth control so u can come inside me

if you want

From u/KyL0_R3N

I think we should stick to no

bondage/degradation/breath play for now

I’m not super into those anyways.

I’ll keep that in mind about your ass.

Maybe nothing in my ass. For now.

That about covers my no’s.

What are some of you hard yes’s?

From u/R3yoflight

i like being taken control of, dominated, i guess

kissing is big for me but i get it if u don’t like it

also major daddy kink but that can be

controlled if its not ur thing

what do u like

From u/KyL0_R3N

Very much yes to that Daddy kink and kissing.

I lean towards dom anyway, so that should work out.

I like hickeys. Giving and receiving.

I also have pretty good stamina, just a warning.

From u/R3yoflight

i like a man with good stamina ;)

u gonna wear me out tonight? 😈

From u/KyL0_R3N

Yes. Yes I am.

She gets there late. Unlike every other time she runs late for something, this time is purposeful. If he gets angry with her, she’ll know to leave. And she’s counting on that. Him giving her a reason to leave. She needs it so she doesn’t do something stupider than what she’s already doing now.

But when she arrives and see’s the absolute mammoth of a man, with long-is black hair and moles and big ears, Rey just knows she’s in for it.

He stands when he sees her. Realistically she knew that 6’3 was tall, but it’s still a bit shocking to her. One of his gargantuan hands is holding a beer, the other resting on the back of the chair. She spends a second too long admiring his form, earning a knowing-but-slight smirk from him.

“You’re Kylo.” It’s an unnecessary statement, because who else could he be, but one that is said all the same.

“And you’re Rey.”

His fucking voice. It’s too beautiful to be addressing her, she’s sure of it.

“Work ran over, that’s why I’m late.” She wasn’t going to give him an excuse, but the words fall out of her mouth.

“I’m familiar with that myself. It’s no trouble, really.” He holds the chair out for her, and she gracefully takes a seat. A server comes around and takes her drink order of a club soda before scurrying off.

“Nothing to relax the nerves?” He question, taking a sip of his drink.

“I prefer to have a clear head for…” She trails off. What does this qualify as? A hook-up? A booty-call? A job interview?

“Good girl.”

Her breath stops for a moment before she remembers its necessary to survive.

“You said you work for a tech company downtown; is it close?” She asks, hoping she sounds passive.

“Not far. I need to be close for tomorrow.” He never looks away from her; it makes her sweat.

The server comes back with her drink, and Rey takes a giant gulp, just for something to preoccupy her mouth.

“You said you work for an auto shop downtown. What do you do there?” He asks, eying her hands curiously. Rey worries that he’ll realize she wasn’t actually at work if her hands aren’t greasy, so she hides them under the table.

“I’m a mechanic,” She tells him, sitting up straighter.

“You’re…” He begins, but she cuts him off.

“A woman mechanic, yes. It’s not entirely uncommon.”

“I was going to say young.” She bites her lip. His voice doesn’t sound like its chastising her, but she feels bad all the same.

“Most men are uncomfortable with the fact that I know more about cars than them.” Rey doesn’t know why she continues to challenge him, but his reactions always surprise her.

It’s… nice.

“Do I seem like I’m uncomfortable by that?”

She regards him. “No, but you did proposition anyone with computer access, so I think your threshold for uncomfortable must be very high.”

He doesn’t laugh, per se, but the corners of his mouth lift and his cheeks become tight. She smiles at the sight.

“Seems that we’re both very bold. A female mechanic and an online propositioner. We make for quite a pair.”

“Hopefully that means the sex will be good.”

Kylo Ren does smile at that.

His hand is on the small of her back when they get in the elevator and Rey is actively trying to ignore the fluttering in her gut, which is why the words blurt out of her.

“My roommate knows where we are!” It’s a loud noise in an otherwise quiet area, but Kylo doesn’t seem startled by it. He just looks down at her. “I have to be back at the apartment, in person, by noon tomorrow or she’s calling the cops.” Rey is quieter now but her voice still shakes.

“My meeting is at 10, so you’ll have plenty of time to get back to your place. I can have my driver drop you off there, if you like,” He says.

“Thats… not why I’m telling you. But that you. I mean, my roommate will know if something bad happens to me. So it would be wise of you to not kill me.” Rey gulps.

Kylo’s hand comes to her face and brushes a piece of hair behind her ear.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Rey.” His voice is soft. “I’m not going to kill you, or hit you, or do anything you don’t want me to do.” She’s facing him now. “If you feel uncomfortable, I wouldn’t be mad. You can leave whenever you want.”

“But what do you want? You’ve asked me what I’ve wanted in every interaction we’ve had, but all I know is that you want to fuck somebody so that you’re not nervous or whatever tomorrow. Do you even want me? Or was I just the first person who responded to you post? It goes both ways, ya know. You need to tell me what you want, too.”

His hand brushes the side of her jaw, his eyes trail down her face, no doubt seeing the nervous expression she wears.

“I want you, Rey.”

His lips are on hers the moment the door is shut. His hand cradles the back of her head as he shoves his body against hers, pinning her to the wall. His other hand grips her hip and will definitely leave a bruise. She loves it.

But his warm, wet mouth on hers with his plush, pink lips makes any coherent thought leave her head. She moans into his mouth, hands trying desperately to pop open the buttons of his shirt. She makes a sound of frustration when the last stubborn button won’t come undone, and his hands are there in an instant, ripping the thing straight off. She slides her hands along his toned chest as his tongue invades her mouth. When her hands venture further south, they find the more than impressive bulge straining against his slacks.

“I should’ve… asked you earlier…” He says into her mouth as he sucks off the remaining shirt and suit jacket, “if you… like… dirty talk.” Rey keens against him, forcing his mouth to go to her neck as she breathes out a chant of ‘yes, yes, yes.’

Kylo makes a noise of approval before hoisting her into his arms. Rey’s legs instinctively wrap around his hips as he walks them towards the bed.

“Good, because it would be a shame not to be able to tell you that I can’t wait to taste your cunt.”

Rey has died.

She has died and gone to whatever afterlife will have her.

She never wants to leave it.

“You… don’t… you don’t have to…” She manages to say between kisses. Kylo pulls back from her then, eyes dark, hair a mess, lip red and bitten.

“I want to. Will you let me?” Rey nods so fast she’s worried her neck will be sore. His hands ruck up her cotton dress, until he decides that the offending material will need to be off all together. She’s left in her black bralette and underwear and Kylo stares down at her.

“My tit’s aren’t that big. I’m sorry if you were looking forward to-”

“They’re perfect,” He cuts her off by kissing down her chest, mouthing her nipples through the dark fabric. The heat of his mouth combined with the coolness of the room make her nipples stand at attention, pebbling at the fabric.

Kylo depends further, and puts his entire face against her still-clothed pussy, inhaling and licking her through the fabric. Rey is a whiny mess against the sheets, hair in every direction, full body blush. She hopes he thinks she’s hot because, god, she’s never sen anyone like him.

Kylo takes of her panties and immodestly begins lapping at her cunt, no warning or hesitation, making Rey give something of a moan and a yelp. Her hand goes to his hair, feeling the luscious locks between her fingers. His hands go to her ass, lifting her up slightly so he gets a better angle.

“You’re… too good… at this…” She manages between breaths. Rey would bet anything he’s smirking against her.

Kylo uses his nose to rub at her clit before alternating between kitten licks and sucking on it. It takes no time at all for Rey to come. So quickly, in fact, that she would be embarrassed if she could move. Her whole body is on fire as he licks her through it, occasionally using a hand to brush at her nipples. The tears streaming out of her eyes and drool gathering at the corner of her mouth must make her look ghastly, but Kylo doesn’t seem to mind.

When he finally sits back, still between her legs, she can make out the bulge from earlier, now even more prominent.

He’s looking down at her, at the mess he’s made of her, and against every instinct, she lets him.

“I don’t normally come that fast,” she tells him. Her voice is quiet even now, and she knows it’ll be strained tomorrow. Good, something to remember him by.

“It won’t take me that long to come, either,” he admits, having the kindness to look sheepish as he says it.

“Then what are you waiting for?”

Kylo represses a smile.

He gets off the bed, shucking his pants, underwear, and socks off in one felt swoop, leaving him gorgeously bare before her. If she though the bulge was impressive, the real thing is even better. His cock is red and pointed upwards as he stands across from her. His hand goes to pump himself a few times, smearing the precome along his length. Rey can’t help but reach out, whole body going with her as she opens her mouth to bring Kylo towards her. His hand stops her, gently, and she looks up at him in confusion.

“I want to suck you off,” She tells him, brows still furrowed.

“Later,” he tells her.

Kylo pulls her back up the bed with him, so that he hovers over her as he kisses her again. She still taste herself on him, but can’t find the heart to care. Her hands go to wrap around him, feeling the thickness for herself. Huge is an understatement. But Rey’s always been ambitious.

She pumps him a little, feeling him nearly whimper in her mouth.

“You gonna let me fuck you, baby?” he murmurs.

“Yes… yes please…”

Rey feels his hand come over hers as Kylo slots himself between her legs and aligns his cock to her core. He slides in, slowly, stretching her the whole way. She pants against his skin, digs her nails into his shoulder.

“Tell me if it’s too much.” His voice sounds strained, like he’s holding back from her.

“It’s good, daddy… so good…” she pants.

He whines some curses against her skin as he finishes seating himself inside of her.

“… so good, sweetheart. Takin’ me so well… taking your daddy so well,” He mumbles, pressing kisses to any part of her skin. Rey can already feel the beginning of another orgasm itch inside of her, and for the first time in a while, she has no doubt that Kylo will get her there.

“Daddy… you can move… please,” She’s breathless as she asks him. He groans above her and rest his forehead against hers.

His hips being to move, still slow, but making her breath hitch ever shallow thrust.

“Tight… so tight for me…” He mumbles. Rey takes a minute to look at him, really look at him. He’s flushed, skin damp, but he’s still so very handsome. Moles dot his face and she can’t resist using a hand to trace them. His hair tickles her nose, so she pushes it back behind his ears, which are a bit too big for his head but she adores them.

Kylo lets Rey take him in, but gets her attention back to the moment with a quick snap of his hips.

“Can you come again?” He asks, and Rey nods. His mouth depends on her neck, sucking hickeys to every patch of skin it finds, as he pushes into her. She can feel the bump of his cock every time he bottoms out, a sensation she’s never felt before, and it makes her clench him every time. His hand skates down between them to get to her clit, and he quickly begins rubbing her there.

“Gonna let me fill you with my come? Gonna be a good girl and hold it all in? Can you do that for me baby? Huh?” His words send shivers down her spine, aiding in his pursuit to get her to come again. She mumbles incoherent words of approval, trying to tel him “yes, yes! I’ll be your good girl!” but speech fails her at the moment.

But Rey knows Kylo understands what she’s trying to say.

She feels his rhythm falter and his hand speeds against her clit. She tightens her legs around his hips, trying to wordlessly tell him she’s close too.

“Please, baby, please come for me…” His voice is desperate and strained and makes her shudder. Her hips find purchase against the base of his cock, in combination with the movement of his fingers, and she’s thrust into the abyss again.

Kylo holds her against him as she comes, whole body vibrating, and he follows after her. He grunts against a pillow as he comes, and Rey is distantly aware that he’s actually biting the poor thing. His come is hot within her, and she feels him pulse as he keeps slamming his hips to hers. The slapping of skin slows as she feels his body let go of the tension, and Rey is boneless beneath him.

He lays on her, still half-hard inside of her, as they come down from their mutual high. They are both breathing so heavily that speaking is out of the question, at least for a while. Kylo pulls out of her, and a mad rush of fluid starts to leak out of her. She clenches, remembering his words from earlier.

Part of her expects a coldness afterwards; after all, that’s what most sex has been for her. Once he’s come, he leaves. It’s the oldest story in the book. And for all Kylo’s talk of ‘stamina’, there’s still a part of her that expects it’s just a façade.

But he doest leave her, cold and debauched, to get redressed and make a hasty exit. Instead, he plants a kiss to the side of her jaw and rubs her torso sweetly before helping her sit up. She’s weak, and he knows it.

“We need to get you cleaned up,” He says when she slouch against him. She mumbles something unintelligible into his skin. Instead of getting rough with her, Kylo just soothes her. “Women are 38% more likely to get a UTI if they don’t pee after sex. That’s not a parting gift I’d like to give you,” he elaborates.

Rey sighs, but lets Kylo get her to the bathroom.

They sleep in spurts.

For a few hours after their first time, before Kylo wakes her with the incessant press of his hard cock into her abdomen. (He takes her even more slowly that time, sleepy and still blissed out. He comes before she does, but he uses his fingers to get her there, still.)

A few hours after that, Rey makes good on her promise to get her mouth on him, waking him with her mouth already working him. (His come tastes bitter and tangy, but she swallows it because it’s his.) She sits on his face afterwards, letting his tongue get her off again.

The next time she wakes, Kylo is kissing her chest, licking at her now oversensitive nipples. There’s a faint light peaking through the windows and Rey knows their time is coming to an end. She runs a hand through his hair to indicate she’s awake now, but he keeps on in his pursuit. Only when her chest spit-covered and shiny does Kylo seem satisfied with his work, and lifts his head to look at Rey.

“Good Morning,” She mumbles, voice strained as expected, and still groggy from sleep. He hums his response, and presses a sweet, lingering kiss to her lips.

Rey glances at the clock, noting its just past 7, when they both sit up in bed. Kylo goes to say something, but is cut off by the grumbling of Rey’s stomach. Her cheeks heat as his voice falls silent.

“Sorry… I haven’t eaten since yesterday morning,” she admits. Kylo’s brow furrows for a moment, but the dark expression passes fleetingly.

“Let’s rectify that first, shall we?”

The breakfast menu for room service is extensive, and Kylo orders one of everyone instead of actually looking it over. Rey can only half-heartedly try to tell him it was too much, when her eyes catch a glimpse of the fluffiest looking waffles she’s ever seen. Kylo had only kissed her head and ordered before walking into the shower.

It arrives in record time, a result, she’s sure, of the high-class hotel he got for them. The room, which she’d been too preoccupied to notice last night, is opulent. A bit gaudy for her taste (were gold curtains really necessary), but Rey was in no position to complain. She hesitated to put on actual clothes, instead opting for the plush robe that hung in the wardrobe.

Rey is half into the whole meal when Kylo emerges from the bathroom, towel hung low on his hips and hair still damp. Rey bites her lip so hard she draws blood. He sits across from her, picking up the two plates she hand’t touched.

“Greek Youghert and fruit? Don’t you want a waffle? I saved some whipped cream for you.” She extends the aforementioned whipped cream, earring her a slight smile from Kylo.

“You’re very kind, but no thank you. This is what I eat every morning,” he tells her. Rey scrunches her face. Kylo pours himself some black coffee too, and Rey finds the will to keep her mouth shut.

They eat in companionable silence, Rey scarfing down whatever her hands touch, and Kylo methodically eating his healthy-dude breakfast. Rey notes that neither of them are on their phones; it’s perhaps the first meal she’s had with someone in a while where that’s the case. Like everything else that’s made her heart flutter with him, she tries to ignore it.

Once the table is thoroughly pillaged, Kylo gets up to get dressed and says nothing when Rey hops on the bed and continues to watch him. He’s not embarrassed by nudity, clearly, and tosses the towel away for a solid 5 minutes before putting on underwear.

He’s fully dressed shortly and applies some product to his hair that has writing in french, yet Rey is still wearing only the robe and probably still has his come on her thighs. And other areas.

Part of her thinks he’ll just carry on with his routine as if she’s not there. He’ll pack his suit from the night before and leave the room without an second glance her way. Much to her relief, she’s wrong.

When he’s finally ready, Kylo turns toward her, leans down, and plants a soft kiss directly on her lips. It’s an infinitely more affectionate gesture than she had expected going into this, but a welcome one all the same. He stares fondly down at her when their lips part.

“The room is yours to use until 4 P.M., but I remember you have a noon curfew,” He tells her. Suddenly, Rey regrets telling Rose to call the national guard if she’s not physically in her presence before the clock strikes 12.

“I guess I’ll make do,” She teases.

They fall silent again, and for the second time that morning Kylo goes to say something, but falls short. The silence becomes too much for Rey to bear, so her cursed mouth opens of it on volition.

“I’m not sure how these are supposed to work… one night stands, I mean,” She admits. Something in Kylo’s face falls, but Rey can’t quite tell what.

“I don’t have much experience with these either,” he tells her. Rey shuffles onto her knees, so that they’re both eye-level, and extends her hand. Kylo looks at it with a hint of confusion mixed with amusement.

“Well, you’ve been a wonderful reddit-fuck. Thank you for posting,” she says, giving a mega-watt smile. He sakes her hand.

“And you’ve been a wonderful reddit-fuck-respondent. Thank you for critiquing my going about soliciting sex.” Rey opens her mouth in an exaggerated offense, but Kylo cuts her off with another sweet kiss.

She melts into it, holding his hair with her hands, letting herself mold to his torso as his tongue swipes her lower lip. The kiss is wonderful and hot and sweet all at the same time and makes her head spin.

When it’s over and she’s caught her breath again, a pang of nervousness infiltrates her consciousness. It’s over, it whispers, you’ll never see him again if you don’t do anything. He’ll leave, just like everyone else, if you let him.

“Do you have any more meetings?” She practically shouts at him. Kylo looks confused for a moment, so she goes on. “I just mean… if you needed someone to help… prepare you for your meetings, there’s a chance I’d be available.” Her voice grows softer as she keeps talking, suddenly feeling like an idiot for suggesting that at all. Before she has a chance to spiral, Kylo brings her back.

“I do… I mean, I will. That would be… very gracious of you, to offer you help.” She bites her lip to keep from smiling too hard.

“Okay, good.” She nods at him, relief washing over her as she realizes she might not be the only one who doesn’t want to let this go.

It’s a new feeling that probably shouldn’t be attached to a person whom was very clear about their desire for a no-strings hook up, but Rey has always had a preference for things that are challenging.

Kylo Ren seems as good a challenge as any.

follow me on twitter!

#reylo #kylo ren #ben solo #rey #star wars #sw #reylo fanfiction #daisy ridley #adam driver #smut #fluff #5+1 #fsnfr #my works #chapter 1

22 notes · View notes

rwby-redux · 4 years

Text

Deconstruction

Worldbuilding: Semblances II

Last time in Part I, we analyzed the failings of Semblances from a meta perspective. Now we’re going to look at them within the context of the actual show. Before we begin, let’s revisit that list of basic traits that are universally shared by Semblances.

A Semblance draws upon Aura as its source of power. When this fuel is depleted, a person can no longer use their Semblance, and must wait for their Aura to regenerate before it can be used again.

The specific ability or nature of one’s Semblance is alleged to be an expression of the user’s personality/character/soul.

Overuse of a Semblance can adversely affect a person and cause physical side effects, such as fatigue, headaches, or fainting.

Semblances can interact with Dust in such a way that their skills are augmented, resulting in the temporary acquisition of new subskills or secondary characteristics.

Through training and regular usage, Semblances can gradually become stronger or more advanced.

The intensity of certain emotions, such as stress, panic, despair, or rage, can cause a person to subconsciously activate their Semblance.

This refresher will be important as we go more in-depth. At the very least, it’ll save you the hassle of having to jump back and forth between tabs.

Limitations of Semblances

Recall point one. If your first instinct is to say, surely having a limited amount of Aura is a good limitation for Semblances, then you’d be forgiven for thinking that. In theory, it makes sense: a power based on a finite energy source does seem like a pretty significant drawback. My main issue with this being a credible limitation for Semblances is that we, the audience, have no way to gauge Aura depletion over time. And by extension, neither do our characters. In the first three Volumes, students used specialized monitors (usually on their scrolls) to keep tabs on Aura over the course of a sparring match. Not only do I like this because it’s a clever visual aid for relaying information to the audience, but also because it conveys clear worldbuilding information: characters don’t seem to have a way of innately sensing when their Aura is low. This idea seems to be reinforced again in V7.E3 - “Ace Operatives.” In the opening scene, Clover reminds RWBY and JN_R that their scrolls have been upgraded with Atlas tech, and they shouldn’t forget to use them. That line of dialogue is accompanied by Blake consulting her scroll for her teammates’ Aura levels. To my knowledge, there’s nothing in the canon that suggests characters can sense or feel when their Aura level drops, or how far away it is from depletion.

Having to rely on scrolls to monitor their Aura would be an excellent limitation to impose on an otherwise limitless superpower. Not only would it require the characters to constantly monitor their Aura, but it could introduce realistic problems. Like what would happen if a character’s scroll was lost, or destroyed, or its batteries died? How would that affect the character’s behavior in regards to Aura-related tasks? Great idea, right?

Now here comes the kicker: we don’t see any evidence of this in the show. When Team RNJR was traveling through Anima, none of them discussed having to find a village to recharge their scrolls. It’s not as if the trees have outlets that they can conveniently plug their scrolls into. Similarly, none of the characters from Volume 3 onward consult their scroll during fights to see where their Aura levels are at. You don’t see characters changing fighting styles midway through a fight in order to conserve what little Aura they have left. You don’t see characters minimizing the use of their Semblance in favor of more efficient tactics.

That’s why limited Aura doesn’t seem like a believable limitation for Semblances—not for a lack of possibility, but for a lack of execution. If characters made more of a fuss about it on-screen, I could buy it. But apart from one or two throw-away lines, characters don’t seem to pay attention to how Aura depletion affects Semblance usage, and by extension, they don’t adjust or change their tactics during combat to compensate for it.

Bear in mind that this discussion has only touched upon general limitations. We haven’t even addressed Semblance-specific limitations yet. Can Marcus Black only steal one Semblance at a time? Can Sun only make a certain number of clones at once? If Yang doesn’t eventually release the energy that she’s stored up, does it backfire on her? Is Pyrrha limited to only one type of magnetism, like ferromagnetism, or can she use more than one type? If Robyn uses her Semblance on someone who’s stating an incorrect fact, but they believe that fact to be true, then does it indicate that the person is lying? Does Hazel’s Semblance allow him to bypass/negate his Aura’s healing factor in order to stab Dust into his body?

And on and on it goes. A combination of vague or poorly-established mechanics for Semblances, coupled with the wide variety of Semblances, makes it impossible to predict what could be a hindrance for our characters down the road. This in turn creates a lack of stakes—how can we, the audience, be invested in the dangers that the cast faces, when we don’t know if those dangers are credible in the first place?

Active versus Passive Semblances

Usually when a character reveals information, it’s meant to answer questions, not create more of them. Such was the case when Qrow revealed his Semblance to Team RNJR for the first time—he brings misfortune, or rather, causes people (and objects in the nearby vicinity) to be blighted by bad luck via the manipulation of probability. Qrow is our introduction to passive Semblances, a term which, if I’m being honest, I’m not even entirely sure is canon. Someone’ll need to correct me on that, but for now “passive Semblance” will do. Because we have precious little information on the topic, I’m going to be relying on direct quotes.

Qrow: My Semblance isn't like most—it's not exactly something I do. It's always there, whether I like it or not. I bring misfortune. [1]

This passage tells us two different things: (1) passive Semblances are always active, and (2) passive Semblances can’t be controlled.

You can already see the problems with introducing a new concept this late in the game, because this new information clashes with what (few) previously-established rules we already have: Do passive Semblances require Aura? If Qrow’s Aura is depleted, will his Semblance continue to run, or will it become unusable like everyone else’s?

This ambiguity becomes even more frustrating when we acquire more information a little over a year later:

“It's not necessarily constantly running, it's more that it randomly spikes to cause unfortunate situations. If he chooses to amplify it in a fight, then yes, it does cost him.” [2]

Now we’re being told that that his Semblance isn’t “always there,” that Qrow can control it to an extent, and that his Semblance only depletes his Aura when he chooses to amplify it. Here we have an example of the character in the show being directly contradicted by one of the show’s creators. This implies that either they didn’t do a good enough job explaining passive Semblances the first time around, or they changed things after the episode aired. It isn’t just a he said/she said issue, either—Semblances requiring Aura is one of RWBY’s core mechanics for its pseudo-magic system, and by having a character whose Semblance breaks that cardinal rule, it makes the writing more difficult to believe or trust in terms of what’s canon versus what’s a retcon; what’s a subplot versus what’s a plothole. It doesn’t help when we get even more contradictory information from later episodes:

Qrow: I wouldn’t thank me. My Semblance brings misfortune. Sometimes I can’t keep it under control. [3]

I’m sorry, I thought we just established that Qrow can only amplify his Semblance. Now you’re telling us that he can partially suppress it too? Either he can’t control it at all, he can amplify it, or he can sometimes suppress its effects. Make up your damn mind.

The effects of his Semblance can be as minor as a coffee spill or as dire as a collapsing building… [4]

No! Stop it! Knocking over a Starbucks latte is not the same thing as demolishing a fucking building.

How is Qrow’s Semblance able to do something as insanely energy-demanding as toppling infrastructure without expending any Aura? How does his Semblance locate or prioritize variables in the environment to exploit/sabotage? Like, if there’s a mouse hanging out near some sort of Dust-powered generator in the building, does his Semblance send out subliminal messaging that convinces the mouse to chew through an electrical wire and cause the generator to explode?

Look, I refuse to believe that spilling a cup of coffee is somehow equal to setting off a stick of TNT or taking a wrecking ball to the side of a skyscraper. It doesn’t make any sense, which means that you have to provide a proper explanation for how it works. Because otherwise you’re going to be left with an audience that assumes Qrow’s Semblance is powered by (a) plot convenience, or (b) rats.

This—all of this, right here—is my issue with passive Semblances. (And don’t even get me started on Clover’s.)

Semblance Discovery, Auratic Plasticity

Did you notice the fancy scientific-sounding term in the heading?

Ooh. Auratic plasticity. That sounds official. You’re probably wondering where that term came from. A scene from Volume 5 you haven’t re-watched in a while (not that I can blame you). A World of Remnant episode, perhaps? Maybe it’s from one of the comics, or the director’s commentary on a DVD, or even an AMA on Reddit?

To answer your question: it didn’t come from any of those. Auratic plasticity is a term I coined exclusively for the Redux. Specifically, for talking about what goes behind discovering a person’s Semblance, and what factors are at play when that Semblance takes on its unique form.

Before we can talk about Auratic plasticity, however, we need to talk about all the ways someone discovers their Semblance. It can vary wildly from person to person. For some, their Semblance unlocks randomly while doing everyday run-of-the-mill things. As alluded to by Taiyang in V4.E9 - “Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back,” Yang’s Semblance activated while she was getting a haircut. For others, it can be the byproduct of training, extreme stress, or an otherwise fatal encounter. [5] In rare instances, Semblances can be hereditary, thus removing any ambiguity of what that person’s Semblance will be when it first activates.

The reason why I bring any of this up is because RWBY’s official stance is that Semblances “generally reflect the wielder’s personality.” [6] If Semblances were generally tied to the personality of the wielder, then it would fail to account for the correlation between the circumstance that triggered the Semblance to manifest, and the resulting Semblance expression.

Let me give you a few examples.

Adaptive Semblance: Nora’s Semblance was unlocked when she was struck by lightning. Consider the fact that her Semblance allows her to absorb electricity without taking any damage from the electric current. Rather than her Semblance being tied to her personality, Nora’s is likely a case of an adaptive Semblance—as in, her circumstances required a very specific Semblance in order to survive the 10,000 amperes running through her body. Instead of her soul generating a Semblance tied to her personality, it prioritized generating a Semblance that would help her survive an immediate and life-threatening scenario.

Innate Semblance: Ruby’s Semblance was discovered one day while training. If we’re to assume that there weren’t any dangerous circumstances factoring into that training session, it’s likely that her soul generated a Semblance that was in fact tied to an aspect of her personality. In this case, her superspeed is a projection of her enthusiasm and hyperactive zeal, and her tendency to prioritize others’ wellbeing over her own, trying to figuratively (and in this case, literally) reach them before they’re harmed.

Hereditary Semblance: Weiss and Winter, and (presumably) Whitley, Willow, and Nicholas all share the glyph-based Semblance unique to the Schnee lineage. The confirmation of their Semblance being explicitly hereditary contradicts the idea that Semblances are an expression of one’s personality. If we go by that logic, it implies that—what, their personalities are all the same? They have no individuality? I’m sorry, but that’s just dumb.

This is why Semblance discovery is important, and why the canon should have paid more attention to developing it. There’s pretty compelling evidence for a person’s Semblance being tied to multiple factors apart from their “personality.” I know that I’m digressing here a bit, but the main reason why I bring up this correlation isn’t just because it clarifies inconsistencies with the canon. It also presents an opportunity to enrich the lore of the show.

In the Redux, Auratic plasticity is the ability of the soul to generate a Semblance based on either an immutable personality trait (innate), a scenario-specific survival method (adaptive), or a “genetic” trait that’s repeatedly selected for due to its inherent fitness (inherited). These three categories are determined by a value called hierarchical prioritization—basically, it’s the soul’s ability to decide what Semblance-trigger gets precedence. I’ll get into more detail when I start the Amendment, but it felt important to clarify my intentions early, so I could justify writing 700 words on why Semblance discovery is important.

Adverse Effects of Using Semblances

Unlike Limitations, which focuses on what a Semblance can or can’t do, Adverse Effects deals with the negative repercussions/consequences of using a Semblance.

Or in RWBY’s case, a lack thereof.

(For the moment, let’s set aside the magic/not magic discourse and acknowledge that yes, in the traditional sense, Aura, Semblances, and Dust are part of RWBY’s magic system, the same way bending is part of A:TLA’s.)

When designing a magic system, you’ve got to balance it. Otherwise, the system contains powers that are vaguely-defined, OP, and bereft of any costs.

One way to implement a system of checks and balances is by giving that system a cost for using it. In RWBY’s case, the only “cost” experienced by characters is physical fatigue whenever they overextend themselves. But in the grand scheme of things it’s not really a detrimental consequence, in part because of how infrequently exhaustion is viewed as a legitimate threat. Seriously. When was the last time you saw the main cast fail because they overdid it while using their Semblances? It just doesn’t happen.

One way you could implement a cost is by tying Semblance usage to a physical demand. According an article by Julia Belluz, Winter Olympic athletes consume anywhere between 1,300 - 2,500 and 4,000 - 7,000 calories on average per day.

It wouldn’t be that much of a stretch to apply this to RWBY. Given the high-intensity acrobatics the characters perform on the regular, it would make sense that strenuous physical activity, coupled with Semblance usage, would create costs in the form of caloric needs. Maybe that’s an issue Team RNJR needs to deal with while backpacking across Anima. Is food a top priority for them? Do they have to restrict Semblance usage when running low on rations? Does the group ever have to hunt or forage for food to meet the energy demands of fighting Grimm?

Not only does this balance out Semblances, but it opens the door for potential worldbuilding. Is “Huntsman” ever used as a euphemism for “glutton”? Do all-you-can-eat buffets ban Huntsmen from their establishments? Do Huntsmen have a reputation for being less picky about food options? In places that use trade-and-barter systems, are Huntsmen willing to accept food as payment instead of lien?

I think that’s more or less everything I wanted to say about Semblances. I have a few unrelated nitpicks, but I can save those for another time. This post is already longer than I intended it to be.

[1] Volume 4, Episode 8: “A Much Needed Talk.”

[2] Shawcross, Kerry. “CRWBY AMA.” Reddit interview. February 12, 2018. [https://www.reddit.com/r/RWBY/comments/7x3w4s/crwby_ama_w_miles_luna_kerry_shawcross_and_paula/du5bpdm/?context=3]

[3] Volume 7, Episode 3: “Ace Operatives.”

[4] Wallace, Daniel. The World of RWBY: The Official Companion. VIZ Media LLC, 2019, page 94.

[5] Volume 5, Episode 4: “Lighting the Fire.”

[6] Wallace, Daniel. The World of RWBY: The Official Companion. VIZ Media LLC, 2019, page 39.

#deconstruction #worldbuilding #writing #semblances

14 notes · View notes

yellowfang89 · 4 years

Text

It’s wild how much has happened and changed since 2010, and now going into 2020. I was going to put in a "read more" out of courtesy but for some fuck ass reason, when I came in to edit it, Tumblr isn't giving me that option and the code ain't working and now I'm slightly buzzed so what the fuck ever you can just keep scrolling if you don't care lol.

January 2010- Obsessed with Legend of the Seeker. Wrapped up finishing playing Pokemon Diamond- my first pokemon game on recommendation of my best friend at the time. My last semester of community college started.

March/April 2010- got acceptance letter to the local state college I planned on transferring to. Best friend didn’t get any notice on whether she got accepted or not, but got an acceptance letter from another college about an hour away, and decided to go there instead. After making this decision, she finally got the acceptance letter from the local state college. But she still ended up going to the hour away one. Also, I turned 21 and had my first margarita.

May 2010- Graduated community college with an AA in art. God, I remember when I used to love art.

At some point I ended up officially leaving Myspace for Facebook, kicking and screaming, because everyone had ditched Myspace for it. I hated Facebook but got used to it.

August 2010- went on a two week cruise to Alaska. Came back and started new college afterwards. Had no friends and was lonely, though kept in close touch with best friend over Facebook. Got new Macbook.

September 2010- Finally found myself in a new friend group. Saw a beautiful boy on lightrail I wanted to talk to, but had no courage to. Realized that this kind of shit was probably why I didn’t have a boyfriend, and I wanted a boyfriend for the sole reason of not feeling like a loser for never having one.

October 2010- Saw same beauty, gathered up the nerve and talked to him. Turned out he also went to my school. We started seeing each other regularly on there and things started taking off.

November 2010- Started hanging out with him regularly, got my first kiss from him. Became an official couple.

2011- Can’t remember what months and for what, because things start blending in together. But

- Beloved cat of five years died.

- Lost my virginity

- Didn’t have much money in bank account and stressed out over it. Couldn’t get a job to rectify the situation cuz no experience.

- Started feeling guilty over the smallest things like asking to borrow a piece of paper from someone. Mentally acknowledging this was weird but also shrugging it off.

- Lost my appetite and had food problems overall- despite always having “food problems.” Never wanted to eat.

- Distinctly remember my stomach rumbling in class and thinking, “good maybe i’ll starve to death!”

2012- Shit blended in together again this year, and for every year here on out.

- Came to the realization one day when walking to the bus that I literally would not care if someone came at me with a gun because I just… didn’t want to exist anymore. Saw nothing wrong with this.

- The thought “things would be better if I was dead” came to my brain out of nowhere. I briefly wondered if this counted as a “suicidal thought.”

-Decided to Google shit like suicidal thoughts, went down a rabbit hole that made me suspect I had depression. It explained things that I thought were off but didn’t care enough to do anything about.

- Eventually saw a counselor at school about this.

- Got a hamster. Hamster died this same year.

- Got a volunteer position at a library scanning old yearbooks onto a computer so I could have some sort of “work experience” to get a job.

- Boyfriend had got me Pokemon Heartgold earlier. I started trying to “collect them all” because why not.

- I switched from using an ethernet chord to WiFi and it changed my life. Especially since I was able to go on the GTS in Pokemon and trade, though it was fucky cuz you could only trade Pokemon you’ve already seen back then.

- Ended up getting Pokemon Black, and it introduced GTS Negotiations which allowed me to match with other trainers and trade Pokemon live. Due to this, I managed to obtain every Pokemon I couldn’t get in my other games. Except event legendaries, unfortunately. I consider this one of my greatest accomplishments and keep up with this to this day.

- Considered switching my major from Graphic Design to Digital Media because I liked my Digital Media class a lot more than my Design classes. And made that switch.

- I decided to minor in psychology because I had already taken a few psych classes for GE credits so why tf not.

- Towards the end, got a “student” job at that same library doing the same thing except with artwork instead of yearbooks. Finally had money. Depression starting to lift? But job was only a 4-8 hour a week deal so not that much money in the long run.

2013-

- Discovered demisexuality via a comment on Reddit. It described me pretty damn well. Weight lifted off shoulders I didn’t even realize was there. Things made sense omg.

- Joined Tumblr.

- Best friend came over for what turned out being the last time. She was moving to Arizona.

- Got a second job working at the tech company my Dad worked at, helping out the customer service rep.

- Slowly found myself drifting apart from friend. Depression still present. Made things hard but tbh she never contacted me either. I got the impression she was mad at me given she unfollowed me on Tumblr without explanation.

- Since not a lot of work to be done helping the csr, I ended up helping our our shipping guy and became his backup. Eventually the purchaser left on maternity leave and I took her place, eventually becoming the main purchaser because they moved her to accounts receivable.

- Decided that my depression was making me a piece of shit friend so I decided to contact best friend to see how things were, only to get a cryptic, passive aggressive, two-word response back. Ended up just dropping it and figured she’d eventually come around and tell me what was wrong. She never did…

2014

- Depression on and off due to the stress of going to work and going to school. At this point I hated all art and wanted nothing to do with any of it and only went to school for the piece of paper saying I graduated college.

- I think this was when I started calling myself gray ace instead of demi because why the hell not and I’ve only been sexually attracted to one person anyway. Possibly still demiromantic though- to this day I’m still unsure tbh.

- Boyfriend taught me to drive. I got my license. I got my first car.

December 2014- I graduated college. It cured my depression. Unfortunately, it was replaced with carpal tunnel.

2015

- Carpal tunnel still full force. All I could do was read.

- I caught up on all the books I’ve wanted to read. Eventually came across Warrior Cats. Thought it was stupid for the first 50 pages, but then became addicted. Lost interest when I had to wait several months for the next arc to come out.

- The year I got into wrestling. I shipped Rolleigns so fuckin’ hard.

- Undertale came out and became one of my favorite games of all time.

- Find out brother is addicted to painkillers which is why he had been acting like such an ass.

- Dumped Facebook.

- Driver at the company I worked at quit. Company wants me to be “temporary” driver on top of purchasing, shipping, and assisting the customer service rep.

- Got into writing and wrote a book and continued writing off and on from then to now.

2016/2017/2018? I can’t even keep track anymore.

- Pokemon Go came out and I finally got a smart phone because of it.

- Brother gets girlfriend and then gets married after only being together a year. Brother seems to have gotten better.

- They started having marital problems almost immediately. My brother turned out being an alcoholic and fuck knows if he’s still doing drugs or not he says he’s not but he’s also a chronic liar. A lot of drama happens that I don’t want to get into. They are now divorced- after two years of marriage.

- Got new laptop cuz Macbook got too old, although it still works.

- The company I had been working at, which had always been a shit company with no money, starts going down the shitter more than it already was.

September 2017- customer service rep quits and I have to do her job on top of purchasing, shipping, and driving. Mental breakdowns become common. Depression worse than it had ever been in my life.

January 2018- get a 45 cent raise because minimum wage went up meaning I was now making minimum wage doing all the bullshit I was doing.

May 2018- Get new job doing ONLY shipping for a few extra bucks more an hour. Depression cured.

2019

- Got in a car accident (not my fault). Car totaled. Replaced it with a 2018 car so it’s all good.

- Experienced my first flat tire half a year later.

- Still get random bouts of depression.

- Still with same boy from 2010. Would love to move in together but fuck if I know when that’ll happen.

- Still wondering wtf happened with my (ex) best friend and am still trying to get over it. Am considering the possibility that it was probably my depressed ass not talking to her at all for like 4 months. Unfortunately I have no way of contacting her to try and make peace because we both dumped Facebook.

- Got back into Warrior Cats.

- Dad got new girlfriend. Parents finally working on getting the divorce they wanted to get 20+ years ago but never did cuz neither one wanted to spend money on it.

- Briefly considered taking up drawing again but my skills have tanked significantly because I haven’t drawn since graduating college. Plus I’m lazy.

- Obsessed with The Witcher.

So much has changed throughout this decade and fuck if I know how next decade is gonna turn out for me but I sure hope it's a better one.

Happy New Year to all, and to all a good night!

#no one cares

1 note · View note

moodboardinthecloud · 3 years

Text

Consume less, create more

Modern technology makes us consumers instead of creatorsAug 21, 2019

Like most people, I like to sit on the bus, stare out at the zombies drooling over their phones, and feel smugly superior. I see their bored, lifeless eyes and pity these sheeple whose lives have been ruined in service of Big Tech profits.

This lasts for about thirty seconds before I get bored. The guy next to me chuckles at something on Kanye’s Twitter feed. Wait Kanye? I thought he was off Twitter! In seconds my own phone is out, and I’m furiously scrolling through Reddit, looking for fresh memes.

And so goes the common trope: we all hate our phones, social media, and Netlfix—but we also love them.

Eventually tiring of plain-vanilla bus-ride superiority, I brought a book with me on the bus. Not a Kindle, or an iPad, but a bona fide bound book.

After every sentence or two I would gaze incredulously around the bus with a sneaky grin. These dumb cows, I thought, look at them melt their brains with their stupid social feeds. They can’t focus like I can. I was about to turn back to Sapiens when I noticed a woman in the back of the bus who wasn’t staring at her phone. Nor was she reading a book. She wasn’t even listening to a monotonous NPR podcast.

This psychopath was sketching. She had a charcoal pencil and was sketching a human figure. She didn’t look happy exactly. But she looked engaged. She looked intent. And all of a sudden my smugness fled. I realized that reading a book was really just like reading Reddit—both were consumptive activitives.

Were previous generations really better off because they merely watched TV, or listened to radio, or read books? All of these activities are passive. All of these activities involve letting external thoughts temporarily replace your own. Today’s smartphones differ from medieval books only in degree—all media is created to be consumed.

I had to start creating.

Corín Tellado was a Spanish author who wrote over 5,000 books in her 81-year lifespan. That’s over sixty books a year, assuming she came out of the womb fully literate. She claimed she could write a book in two days, and I’m inclined to believe her.

I can’t write a tweet in two days. Nevertheless, I was inspired by Tellado to stop consuming and start creating. If we categorize all our waking moments as either consumptive or creative, I was probably at a 10:1 ratio, and that’s only if I label “copy/pasting stock images into Keynote presentations” as “creative.” Tellado was probably closer to 1:1. How could I get closer to that?

On my next bus ride I pulled out my phone and opened the iOS notes app. I created a new note titled Essay.

I stared at that off-white screen for several long minutes without typing anything. I don’t have anything to write about, I thought. Also, I’m not even a good writer…maybe I should look online for some tips…

But that was a bad idea and I knew it. So I swallowed my pride and just started writing:

Why I think creating stuff is a good thing.

An essay by Tom C.

This was going to be rough.

I think people consume too much, and don’t create enough. This is bad I think.

Like, really rough.

But I kept typing; pouring inane, kindergarten-level drivel into my phone.

The average person can type about 20 words per minute on a phone. My commute is about 30 minutes each way, so that’s a maximum of 1,200 words a day. Realistically I’m going to have to spend some time thinking about what to write, so let’s be conservative and shoot for 500 words a day.

I read somewhere that a good blog post is 1,600 words…so if I work fast I could pump one out every three days, right?

The first day I wrote 100 horrible words. Really super bad. No one will ever see these words.

Day two I wrote 80 words. I think I psyched myself out over how bad the previous day went.

The third day I only kept writing out of stubbornness. I knew this project was doomed, but I felt like really dooming it.

By then end of the first week I had 500 words in the bank. I didn’t feel good about it, but it felt slightly better than scrolling through 47 #AndThatsWhyYouAreMyEx tweets.

My essay was garbage. But it was my garbage.

So I kept at it, day after day. I once again started feeling smugly superior to my fellow bus riders. Look at me creating, I thought. Look at me contributing to the world, while these reptiles just distract themselves with their phones until they die.

This arrogance lasts for a few seconds until I re-read the stream-of-consciousness dogshit I’m typing into my phone.

I’ve never done sales, but I know a little bit about the “sales funnel.” You hire college grads to make 500 cold calls in a week. Of those 500 calls, maybe 5% agree to watch a demo of the product. Then some slightly-more-senior sales people do this demo, and perhaps 20% of those demos end up in contract negotiation. And 60% of those end up as actual sales. That means you need 500 cold calls to make three sales.

I think that’s what creating is like. You need to write 500 words to get three good ones. Or 500 sketches, business ideas, or recipes. If you’re really really good, you can increase your overall conversion rate from 0.6% to 1%—but the most reliable way to get better results is to just produce more crap.

So I kept at it. week after week. Sometime in the middle of the fourth week I had 3,000 words in my Notes app. That’s when I started editing.

Editing is hard because you realize how bad you are. But editing is easy because we’re all better at criticizing than we are at creating.

The good thing about forcing yourself to produce a bunch of garbage is that you don’t feel bad deleting it. You’re not married to any of your work, because you wrote it half-awake on the 1BX while some crazy dude negotiated his fare with the driver. I gleefully deleted hundreds of words, trying not to think about the neanderthal who must’ve written them.

It was exactly a month after I started this creative project that I finished this first essay. I read it over for the bazillionth time and thought this only a small tire fire.

In it’s final form, the essay was almost exactly 1,600 words. I called it Consume less, create more.

You are, in fact, reading that essay right now. It may not look like it, but this is the product of an entire month of bus rides. If you live in San Francisco and saw someone on the 1BX smashing the face of his phone like he was angry at it, you probably saw me writing this essay.

Perhaps three people will read this essay, including my parents. Despite that, I feel an immense sense of accomplishment. I’ve been sitting on buses for years, but I have more to show for my last month of bus rides than the rest of that time combined.

Smartphones, I’ve decided, are not evil. This entire essay was composed on an iPhone. What’s evil is passive consumption, in all its forms.

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram—we can all agree that these are serious timewasters. But what about The Economist or War and Peace? How much can you really remember from all of those New York Times op-eds you’ve read? Could you summarize the major themes of Grapes of Wrath?

Most knowledge worth having comes from practice. It comes from doing. It comes from creating. Reading about the trade war with China doesn’t make you smarter—it gives you something to say at dinner parties. It gives you the illusion that you have the vaguest idea what is happening in our enormously complex world.

A lot of ink has been spilled about the perils of modern technology. How it distracts us, how it promotes unhealthy comparisons with others, how it makes us fat, how it limits social interaction, how it spies on us. And all of these things are probably true, to some extent.

But the real tragedy of modern technology is that it’s turned us into consumers. Our voracious consumption of media parallels our consumption of fossil fuels, corn syrup, and plastic straws. And although we’re starting to worry about our consumption of those physical goods, we seem less concerned about our consumption of information.

We treat information as necessarily good, and comfort ourselves with the feeling that whatever article or newsletter we waste our time with is actually good for us. We equate reading with self improvement, even though we forget most of what we’ve read, and what we remember isn’t useful.

So stop reading and start creating. Paint, draw, compose, code, or plan. It will be hard. It will be slow. It will be frustrating. But I promise it will be worth it.

https://blog.tjcx.me/p/consume-less-create-more

1 note · View note

meganstephania · 3 years

Text

Getting back to basic life.

Gonna say it, PANDEMIC.

Okay, that’s out the way and no I won’t say it again, we’ve been there, BOY have we been there.

It was sh*t (still is) but in all fairness 2020/2021 has been good for my soul. After over a year being shut away don’t you look back on your life before and just think – Jesus, WHAT mayhem?!

I mean, I woke up every weekday and put on a full face of makeup, got in my car, drove to the office, had a day at work, drove back. I would never have time, or I never felt like I had time. The time I did have I spent on social media (Instagram mostly) – God, I would scroll for hours, because I felt like I didn’t have time to do anything productive, but also had time to kill – makes sense right? Not.

Before, I had to keep up with this continuous loop of life, the constant routine, the constant absorbing of other peoples lives, the constant critiquing of my own in comparison. It was crazy, but just a year ago – that was considered NORMAL.

(mental)

Then we were all forced to stop, the virus was like mother nature going:

“F*cking hold on, you idiots are forgetting to just LIVE.”

Sort of forced us to live a bit more basic, didn’t it?

Routines were gone, travel was gone, the need for makeup was gone, the need to see what everyone else was doing on social media was gone. Just, gone.

At first you panic: CHRIST, my life is gone, what do I do?!

Then you sort of realise, all these things we thought was filling our lives up, were actually just wasting it away?

After a while I got used to having time, proper time. To do things I would never have done before. Like drawing, RANDOM drawing – I might not be good but hell, it’s f*cking fun.

I even bought a skateboard, never skated in my LIFE. Just had the urge, and here we are, new skills and new injuries to be enjoyed.

I started to realise I didn’t have to wear make up to feel confident, after a few sketchy visits to the shops were I thought the whole world was judging my eye-bags – I felt cool with it.

Even saw myself differently because of it, some subtle but serious self-care moments were happening without me even realising.

And social media, what social media? Who effing cares? I know I didn’t. I mean, I didn’t delete all of them (I canny lie). I kept Instagram, Twitter and Reddit (Reddit is sort of the social media for people who don’t like social media – I’d recommend).

But Instagram I just made a new one: my profile photo is an illustrated bat and it’s called @swing.away.merrill – it’s inspired by one of my favourite films (random but again – who’s judging?). I followed pages I wanted to, no celebs, no influencers, no cr*p bascially, lots of art, humour and just some wacky crazy stuff that just made me laugh.

Now every time I go there (and that’s not that often even) I feel good, really good.

Now...

...these are things I would NEVER have felt the need to change before, because I felt like they weren’t damaging. But, after being forced to change my habits and my life really, I’ve realised I wasn’t really that happy before after all...

Content, maybe. Existing, maybe. Living? Nahhhhhhh.

What I was doing before isn’t life, experiencing the same things over and over again? Not learning anything new? Being obsessed with what others are doing? More so than what I could be doing? No self improvement? No self-awareness? – that’s not life at all.

What is that? A shell, making you this passive being that just counts down the years until it’s done.

We’re conditioned to continuously rotate in this work/life circle, honestly...f*ck the rotation.

I’ve learned that life, real life, is actually meant to be a bit random.

Do something that breaks the cycle, go with a gut feeling, be spontaneous (my skating is working out well by the way thanks for asking – level one and climbing). Don’t worry about what other people think of you and don’t worry about them either – does it really matter? No.

Enjoy the moments, don’t waste any time, make up for the time you’ve wasted already, and do this twice over. Realise and get rid of the things that are taking this away from you. Be yourself, don’t be someone else, don’t accept the shell you were before – be new.

It’s something valuable that I’ll take away from such a sh*tter of a year, and I’ll always thank mother nature for all of that at least.

#pandemic #covid #lifelessons #selfcare

0 notes

chasandres · 6 years

Text

Creating a Better Magic Community

Like many of you, I was shocked and horrified on Saturday when I learned that Christine Sprankle decided to step away from the community due to repeated and targeted harassment from Jeremy of MTG Headquarters/Unsleeved Media as well as continued harassment from other toxic members of the community.

I was shocked, but I wasn’t surprised. Talk to enough women in the Magic community and stories about harassment inevitably crop up. It’s not so much an open secret as a low-grade headache that can turn malignant.

Regardless, I was thrilled to see the community almost entirely united in its support for Christine. On Tuesday, a large group of pros responded to the situation by writing an open letter condemning MTG Headquarters’ actions and pledging to act as allies and advocates for victims of harassment at future events. I’m proud to be part of a community where so many high profile people are taking active steps to ameliorate this situation.

There isn’t much I can add to this specific situation at this point. I’m not here to write more about why Jeremy needs to be banned from YouTube and WotC sanctioned events—other people are doing that already, and they know more about this situation than me. I suspect that this particular dragon will eventually be slain, most people will consider the matter resolved, and we’ll seek to move beyond this dark chapter in our game’s long history.

But MTG Headquarters has more than THIRTEEN THOUSAND followers on Twitter. Unsleeved Media has A HUNDRED AND FORTY FOUR THOUSAND SUBSCRIBERS. Not all of them supported his overt harassment campaign, but overt harassment is only one part of a larger, systemic problem in the Magic community. Taking down an obvious villain is commendable, but if that’s all we do, than we’ve failed to properly learn from this situation. If we truly want to create a more inclusive community, we all have some work to do.

Before getting into the meat of this thing, I want to be very clear about who I am and why I’m writing this. I’m not here to tell stories of harassment or otherwise step on the voices of the community members who fight those battles on a daily basis. Those aren’t my stories to tell. I’ve already heard similar stories to Christine’s pop up on social media over the past few days, and it’s important that we magnify those voices and believe them.

As a heterosexual white man in a position of relative power, (at least in terms of being someone that the greater Magic community has more or less heard of) I’d like to use some of my power for good. We can’t place the burden of action entirely on the victims of harassment—we all have to step up and take some of it on ourselves. This is my best effort to help in any way that I can.

While the open letter pros are doing a commendable job of keeping the watch at large events, this is an issue that starts at the roots—at FNM, in our living room, on Magic Online. We can’t just leave things up to Brad Nelson and Sam Black—we all need to step up.

To that end, I’ve written a lot of this post in second person, using a lot of “you” and “we.” I feel like it’s important to say straight off that the “you” I have in mind are people who look more or less like me. I’m not trying to lecture marginalized members of the Magic community about an issue that they already understand all too well. This is a message for geeky white guys like me.

If you scroll down any Reddit thread about this issue, or you check the mentions on the right Twitter account, or you read the right Facebook page, you’re going to see more than just solidarity. You’re going to see a lot of confusion, and bitterness, and outright hostility over this situation. Some guys are a little bit ambivalent about what the heck our role is in all of this and how we can help. Others feel attacked and feel like “both sides” should be considered. Still others are unconvinced that there’s a problem at all.

I’ve been around the internet long enough to know that my message is going to fall on a whole lot of deaf ears, but I want to do my best to try and reach everybody I can. At the very least, I want to write this post to remind myself what I can do to help. When I say that we’re all somewhat complicit, I’m including myself. We all have to do better. All of us.

“I haven’t sent any harassing DMs or made any horrible comments on anybody’s videos or articles. Why are you putting me on blast?”

The harassment problem in the Magic community is systemic and multi-layered. I can count at least three different problems, and you don’t have to be actively harassing anyone to be involved with two of them:

1) Active, toxic harassers. These are the people doing the worst, most heinous stuff. These are people who troll women in comments sections, spout racist and anti-Semitic comments at tournaments, and worse. Most of recognize that we shouldn’t be these people.

2) Enablers, both active and passive. The problem is that most of us are guilty of enabling those harassers at one point or another.

Sometimes we downplay it. (“He’s harmless. He’s got a good heart. He’s just a little awkward.”)

Sometimes we justify it. (“We wouldn’t be able to get a draft going every week without him.”)

Sometimes we straight-up defend it. (“He shouldn’t have said that, but do you have to be so sensitive?”)

3) People saying or doing hurtful stuff that they didn’t think about very much. You could also call these microaggressions, but I know that some of you are put off by the language of social justice, so I want to spell out this problem as clearly as possible. The point is that there are lots of phrases, gestures, and actions that (either inadvertently or on purpose) create a barrier between the dominant voices in the community and those who feel like outsiders. You might not sense it, but they do.

These smaller offenses can be tough to pin down, but the only way to do it is by listening to the people who are affected by these actions, believing their stories, and changing our behavior accordingly.

For example, talk to almost any woman who has ever played a game of tournament Magic and she’ll tell you a dozen stories about being disrespected at Magic tournaments due to her gender. It’s usually not as simple as someone walking up to her and saying, “you’re a woman, stop playing Magic” – it’s hearing stuff like, “did your boyfriend teach you to play?” and “I thought you’d be easier to beat!” over, and over, and over again.

If you’re a white guy like me who has never experienced this, try to imagine how disheartening this must feel, especially on days when you’re running bad and your deck just isn’t behaving. A lot of us play Magic because we like to experiencing that feeling of mastery, especially when the rest of life isn’t going so hot. Now imagine a wry smirk of recognition on the face of your opponent when he beats you because of a lucky top deck. I knew I’d beat the girl. This match was never in doubt. Would Magic still feel like an escape for you? Are you sure?

“I’ve been a member of the Magic community for years, and I don’t see why I should have to hide who I am or censor myself! This is my home, and I should feel safe to communicate however I want.”

I can’t convince anyone that empathy is important. If you don’t believe that it’s worth making small sacrifices or accommodations in order to make another person feel safe or comfortable, that’s on you.

For the rest of us…well, these requests are so small, and they mean so much. Nobody’s asking you give away your Scarab Gods, stop attending FNM, or only talk on alternate Thursdays. It’s basic stuff like not using “gay” as a slur and leaving your half-naked Anime girl playmat at home. You’re not being asked to hide major parts of your identity, and you don’t have to “hide who you are.” You just have to stop acting like an abrasive jerk and maybe stop using a couple of problematic words.

In return, the payoff is massive. We’re always talking about how Magic’s player base isn’t growing like it used to. Well, I know at least a dozen women who stepped away from the community because they didn’t feel welcome. Imagine if we all tried a little bit harder to make our little corner of geekdom a little bit friendlier?

“But political correctness has run amok!”

Whenever I have a conversation about political correctness with someone who dislikes the concept, it usually devolves into some grand hypothetical conversation about freedom of speech in stand-up comedy or edgy TV shows or whatever.

I’m happy to have that discussion with any of you fine folks the next time we’re at an event together, but it’s not pertinent to our conversation today. I feel like we’re all mature enough to recognize that a Magic tournament is not the same as a comedy club or an R-rated film.

“We shouldn’t be nicer to people because of the slippery slope!” is a bad hill to die on.

“I’m sick of being called a sexist all the time. I’m not a sexist!”

Extreme binary thinking is one of the biggest obstacles to self-improvement, and it’s a paradigm that you’re going to have to break free from if you want to experience any sort of meaningful growth.

Think back to the last time someone accused you of saying something racist, sexist, or otherwise harmful. If you’re anything like me, chances are your initial reaction is to get super defensive. I’m not racist, you think, your mind instantly flashing to a hooded KKK member. I can’t be racist because of <insert justification here>, I didn’t really mean any harm by my comments, and I’m certainly no KKK member, so this person must be overreacting!

This is an understandable reaction, but it’s important to learn how to move beyond it. As a society, we are TERRIBLE with this sort of nuance. We assume that there are “good” people (non-racists), and “bad” people (racists), and nobody wants to be lumped in with all the Hitlers. Instead, we blame the people leveling the accusations at us for overreacting, or for being too politically correct, or for jumping to conclusions based on “one stupid joke.” Some of us even double down on our suspect behavior, believing that it’s important to stake out some sort of “middle ground.”

But the problem isn’t them, it’s us. There are no good guys and bad guys. We can ALL do better. It’s okay to feel that initial stab of shame and defensiveness, but then it’s important to really look inside you and realize that what you said was hurtful. In fact, it hurt them so much that they felt the need to speak up and say something to somebody THAT THEY KNEW WOULD REACT DEFENSIVELY. That’s not an easy task for most people, and it’s extra hard for a marginalized person in a community where they don’t feel safe.

Look—I’m no exception to this rule. When I go back and watch some of the videos I recorded back in high school and college, I can’t help but cringe at some of the language I used and the jokes I made. In ten years, I’ll probably feel the same way about some of what I say now. It’s not like I was a horrible sexist back in 2007 and a totally enlightened person now—it’s that I’ve made (and continue to make) an effort to learn, grow, and improve. Being a good person is about constantly seeking to improve, same as being a good Magic player.

“All of this harassment talk makes me sick to my stomach. What can I do to help?”

First, listen to the people telling their stories of harassment. Internalize them, validate them, believe them.

This is pretty easy when the harasser is someone like Jeremy, who is well-known to be a toxic member of the community. It’s harder when it’s someone beloved. It’s even harder when it’s someone who you know personally. Your initial reaction may be defensiveness—it often is for me—but there’s a time and a place for that, and it’s not now.

Remember: we are mature enough to handle these situations with poise and nuance. Some people just need to be sat down and told to stop behaving badly, while others need to be banned and ostracized. We won’t be able to call out either type of harasser without creating an environment where people feel safe coming forward.

Second, you need to get more comfortable calling out the harassers in your own life. It’s MUCH harder for victims of harassment to call it out than it is for us bystanders, which is why it’s important that we not let any of this toxicity stand even when it doesn’t directly affect us.

Don’t just say something at FNM—speak up during your kitchen table drafts, too. “We don’t say stuff like that here,” is a good turn of phrase to keep in your back pocket. It’s important to sweep away that “boy’s club” atmosphere for good, because it can permeate out from late-night hotel room games into the community at large.

A lot of these people aren’t evil, they’re just prickly, misguided, and socially awkward. Some of them will double-down on their bad behavior and are unreachable, but I have to believe that at least some of them really do mean well. The only way to find out is by changing the climate and calling out the unacceptable stuff whenever we can, wherever we can. Otherwise, they’ll keep driving people away.

Of course, there are some actions that require a harsher response. Jeremy has an entire platoon of followers who will be harder to pin down. And these guys aren’t outsiders, they’re members of the community. They’re guys that you and I both know.

If you know about someone who likes to troll marginalized members of the Magic community on social media, you need to do everything you can to get them to stop. “It’s just a joke” should not be an acceptable defense at this point. These people need to understand that their actions have consequences.

To this end, try to get more comfortable appealing to authority figures like LGS owners and judges about stuff like this. It’s easier for people like us to speak up about harassing language when we hear it, and most of it is a disqualifying offense in sanctioned play. In smaller or casual events, remember that store owners are too busy running the shop to know what’s going on in the back room. Feel free to enlighten them.

This is especially important when dealing with constant, repeatable offenders. These are the people who lower the attendance at local events because large swaths of the player base don’t feel comfortable gaming with them. We need to do a better job of weeding them out and letting them know that they need to choose between being a productive member of the community or no longer being a part of the group.

Lastly, never assume that you are above it all. I’m certainly not. Remember that making mistakes in the social arena are like misplays in Magic: each one is a chance to improve, to become more precise, to grow as an empathetic person. The important thing is to acknowledge it, apologize, and do your best not to make that mistake again.

I’m sick of hearing “Magic is awesome, but the community kind of sucks.” The community is all of us—you, me, and everyone else who has ever picked up a Magic card and felt that instant, powerful connection. We all have a right to thrive within it, to feel comfortable slinging spells in shops and tournaments around the world. I’m willing to fight for that right. Are you?

5 notes · View notes

funnynewsheadlines · 4 years

Text

Guy Asks People To Edit Their Original Questions So His Answers Make Him Look Like He’s A Jerk (40 Pics)

Serious answers can sound hilarious when they’re taken out of context. Especially if someone changes the original question to something inappropriate.

That’s exactly what Reddit user Jptoc asked his fellow internet users to do to entertain them during the quarantine. Jptoc told people to ask them a question and then to edit it to make them sound like a complete jerk with their answer. The thread was wildly popular on the r/CasualUK subreddit, with over 63.6k upvotes in a single day and more awards than we could count.

Scroll down, enjoy, and let us know which question-answer combination you found the funniest, dear Pandas. Be warned—some of the questions are a bit scandalous! But, hey, most of us should be working and studying from home anyway! Scroll down for Bored Panda’s chat with Jptoc about their Reddit thread.

Image credits: jptoc

According to Jptoc, they were inspired to create the thread after seeing someone else do it. “I have since found out there's a whole subreddit for it. I was bored working from home and wanted to kill a bit of time towards the end of the day. I don't think there's any way I could have expected it to be that popular. It went a bit mad to be honest. I don't think it's even that funny, really!”

Jptoc said that the popularity of their thread shows that “when people are bored they'll laugh at any old nonsense.”

“I've had quite a lot of people message me to say that it cheered them up so I'm glad of that. I think me staying engaged in the thread helped to humanize me a bit as well, so people responded to that. It seems to have taken on a life of its own now though, I was sent a link to a YouTube video someone has made of the thread. Bit weird,” Jptoc told Bored Panda.

Image credits: jptoc

We were also interested to find out how the lockdown affected the redditor. Here’s what they had to say: “I'm fine—I can work from home and go out for my daily exercise without issue. I've signed up to be a volunteer for the NHS and would recommend people do the same in the UK or elsewhere.”

Jptoc recommended that people “check out the stickied megathread on r/CasualUK because there's loads of good ideas of what to do in there” if you’re out of ideas on how to have fun during the quarantine. “Call people as well!” they added.

Image credits: jptoc

As fun as Jptoc’s Reddit thread is, it raises two serious questions: how not to sound like a d*ck and how not to be a jerk. Psychiatrist Jeremy Spiegel, medical director of Casco Bay Medical, has some advice about how to control your jerk impulses if you suspect that you might be one. After all, life’s much easier if you get along with most people.

When you come off as a jerk to others, a lot of this has to do with inappropriate timing. So if you have a snippy retort or a passive-aggressive comeback that you’d just love to shout out, try keeping quiet for a minute until the urge goes away. You might just realize that what you were about to say would have been offensive and done more harm than good. To you and to others.

#10

Image credits: jptoc

#11

Image credits: jptoc

#12

Image credits: jptoc

Spiegel also suggests that you take some time, focus on yourself, and examine your life and your character. Because introspection can help fight narcissism.

What also helps is looking at situations from a third-person perspective: this might help you realize that what you’re getting mad about really doesn’t matter all that much and you should let it go.

Finally, if you find that your jerk-levels are out of control, ask a friend for help. They’ll give you honest advice and help you understand where you’re going wrong. When you have everything under control, you can pretend to be a jerk on fun threads like Jptoc’s and have as much fun as you want.

#13

Image credits: jptoc

#14

Image credits: jptoc

#15

Image credits: jptoc

#16

Image credits: jptoc

#17

Image credits: jptoc

#18

Image credits: jptoc

#19

Image credits: jptoc

#20

Image credits: jptoc

#21

Image credits: jptoc

#22

Image credits: jptoc

#23

Image credits: jptoc

#24

Image credits: jptoc

#25

Image credits: jptoc

#26

Image credits: jptoc

#27

Image credits: jptoc

#28

Image credits: jptoc

#29

Image credits: jptoc

#30

Image credits: jptoc

#31

Image credits: jptoc

#32

Image credits: jptoc

#33

Image credits: jptoc

#34

Image credits: jptoc

#35

Image credits: jptoc

#36

Image credits: jptoc

#37

Image credits: jptoc

#38

Image credits: jptoc

#39

Image credits: jptoc

#40

Image credits: jptoc

from Funny – Bored Panda https://ift.tt/2JfW1wf via IFTTT from Blogger https://ift.tt/2ybVJo3

#funny news #funny videos #funny news today #funny photos

0 notes

rashmig3p18 · 4 years

Text

Week 9!

Hi friends! It’s been one of my favourite weeks so far so buckle in for some fire content!

Fandoms. I’d say that we’ve all been a part of one; either fully invested or just a simple consumer who enjoyed the content. Though when we use the word fan there is a lot of different images that come to mind like Sullivan talks about it could be the image of a “geeky, socially challenged, but ultimately benign and lovable fan” that just really loves Star Trek (Sullivan, 2013, p192).

Or it might be a much darker side to being a super fan where it might cross a boundary and reach the third level of ‘worship’ where an individual has a deep fixation on a celebrity or persona and would do anything for them [also if you don’t remember this, scroll down to Week 3!].

Fans can also team together to change the narrative of their fandom, in lecture we discussed the Star Trek fandom coming together or event the article by Annemarie Navar-Gill where she analyses the Veronica Mars fandom’s efforts to get a follow up movie. Navar-Gill discusses patronage as the “support of a fan audience boosts the artistic and authorial credibility of a creator (Navar-Gil, 2018, p222). In her conclusion, Navar-Gill states that the symbolic patronage is an example of how audiences now have the power and ability to influence production as well as the industry decision-making. (Navar-Gil, 2018, p223).

Similarly, a bit more recent example of fans coming together to show their support is in the Taylor Swift fandom [aka Swifties]. Taylor put it out on twitter that her record label Big Time Management [which she left sometime last year] was restricting her from performing her old songs at the American Music Awards where she is said to win ‘Artist of the Decade’ and that they’re keeping her from using her own music in her own documentary. She stated that she felt like she had no choice but to let the fans know before the AMAs, and since her tweet on November 14th she’s got more than 851.8k likes, Swifties got the hashtag #IStandWithTaylor trending worldwide and around 100k fans and others have signed a petition against Big Time Management.

Fan audiences are described as “deeply engaged in their favorite media texts, fans often reinterpret media content and create their own cultural productions in response” (Sullivan, 2013, p193). With that understanding in mind there is also what is known as the ‘Continuum of Fandom’ which follows 4 types of fan and it understand them in different levels of involvement/passion.

The first is a consumer and this is the passive level of fandom with the least involvement from the audiences’ side. I am a consumer of The Walking Dead because I watched it on Netflix but I didn’t grow any attachment to the show or its characters, but I still a watched the show making me a consumer (Professor Good, week 9, Nov 7th).

The next level is enthusiast. Here people begin to grow a greater connection to the media, they might go do more background research on characters or actors or begin look up topics with other fans (Professor Good, week 9, Nov 7th). How to Get Away with Murder was a show that my roommates and I really got into the first year and we would always watch it together and discuss it with other people on our floor and look up what other people were saying on social media

The next is fan. Fans will go into a deeper analysis of the media text and begin to interact with other fans on sites or platforms that are specific for that fandom (Professor Good, week 9, Nov 7th). For example, if you’re a fan of Sherlock you would go post and interact with other fans on Reddit in the subreddit on Sherlock or having a Tumblr specifically for Sherlock.

The last significant level on the continuum is producer who are considered the most active fan. Fan producers re-interpret the media text or some how work themselves into the narrative; this can be things like fan fiction, fan art, fan videos or even Filk songs which if you didn’t know is a mix between fiction and folk songs [an interesting idea, I know!]. It can also turn into a profession for the fan, for example, Anna Todd who started on Wattpad writing Harry Styles fan fiction ended up actually publishing the book and it then got turned into a movie early this year.

This week in lecture we discussed Henry Jenkins and the 9 types of participatory culture his book Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. To simplify them into how I understand them with examples I talk about half of them in relation to fan fiction and fan culture and the other half Marvel Cinematic Universe

‘Recontextualization’, Jenkins describes it as short stories that are meant to fill in the gap in existing media texts, when fans are happy with the way a story ends they might write their own endings with what they prefer. For example, many fans rewrote or reimagined the Game of Thrones finale because the way it ended was superrrr unsatisfying.

‘Personalization’ which is famous in fan fictions where the writers or fans incorporate themselves into the story line alongside the characters. Some fan fiction has ‘Y/N’ [your name] in their stories which means whoever is reading it can read it as their name which personalizes the story to them.

Eroticization, where it explores a characters’ sexuality and sexual encounters that are not scene in the primary narrative. There’s a lot [A LOT!] of fan fiction written about Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson [ship name: Larry] that write them to be a couple and eroticize them.

‘Genre shifting’ where the primary genre of the media will be shifted or changed into something different. For example, the original Sabrina the Teenage Witch show or the original comics and Netflix show The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina are based on the same story but they have two different genres. The original is more humour based and structured like a sitcom, where the new show takes a much darker and creepier take on the story.

Arrow and The Flash [or lots of the MCU television shows can be listed as an example for 4 of the 10 concepts Jenkins discusses. ‘Expanding the timeline’ where it can explore the character background or rewrites unpopular endings; Arrow started to have flashbacks in an attempt to explain why Oliver Queen [Green Arrow] ended up how he is now, also by expanding the timeline they were able to bring in new characters like The Flash into the story line.

‘Crossovers’ where in which boundaries are blurred between two media texts in a way to introduce character from one text into the other. Arrow and The Flash are two shows that have now had several different crossovers where characters from one will often appear in the other, they’ve also done crossovers with Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow where characters from all 4 shows interact with each other.

Refocalization’, this allows of the focus to shift away from central characters to focus on secondary or minor character. The Flash even though is technically centered around Barry Allen; the last couple seasons offer central plot lines for some of their secondary characters like Caitlin Snow or Cisco Ramon.

‘Moral realignment’ it inverts the moral universe of the original narrative depending on how you look at it, the Green Arrow could be a ‘villain’ because of he is considered a vigilante who takes always takes matters into his own hands and often disobeys law enforcements. This is kind of like Robin Hood basically, so is taking from the rich and giving to the poor morally justified or just wrong.

0 notes

ncmagroup · 5 years

Text

This research was conducted by the Media Insight Project — an initiative of the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research

Introduction

For years, researchers and social critics have worried that the newest generation of American adults is less interested in news than those who grew up in the pre-digital age.

Social media and mobile play a large role in Millennial news consumption. 94% of those surveyed own smartphones. The average Millennial gets 74% of her news from online sources.

Much of the concern has come from data that suggest adults age 18-34 — so-called Millennials — do not visit news sites, read print newspapers, watch television news, or seek out news in great numbers. This generation, instead, spends more time on social networks, often on mobile devices. The worry is that Millennials’ awareness of the world, as a result, is narrow, their discovery of events is incidental and passive, and that news is just one of many random elements in a social feed.

A new comprehensive study that looks closely at how people learn about the world on these different devices and platforms finds that this newest generation of American adults is anything but “newsless,” passive, or civically uninterested.

Millennials consume news and information in strikingly different ways than previous generations, and their paths to discovery are more nuanced and varied than some may have imagined, according to the new study by the Media Insight Project, a collaboration of the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

How Millennials get news

Percent of Millennials who… Say keeping up with the news is at least somewhat important to them 85% Get news daily 69% Regularly follow five or more “hard news” topics 45% Usually, see diverse opinions through social media 86% Pay for at least one news-specific service, app, or digital subscription 40%

MEDIA INSIGHT PROJECT

This generation tends not to consume news in discrete sessions or by going directly to news providers. Instead, news and information are woven into an often continuous but mindful way that Millennials connect to the world generally, which mixes news with social connection, problem-solving, social action, and entertainment.

Rather than having a narrowing effect on what Millennials know about, however, the data suggest this form of discovery may widen awareness.

Virtually all Millennials, for instance, regularly consume a mix of hard news, lifestyle news, and practical “news you can use,” the study finds. Millennials are more likely to report following politics, crime, technology, their local community, and social issues than report following popular culture and celebrities, or style and fashion. Fully 45 percent of these young adults regularly follow five or more “hard news” topics.

Millennials also appear to be drawn into news that they might otherwise have ignored because peers are recommending and contextualizing it for them on social networks, as well as on more private networks such as group texts and instant messaging. Once they encounter news, moreover, nearly 9 in 10 report usually seeing diverse opinions, and three-quarters of those report investigating opinions different than their own.

The data also suggest that social networks are exposing Millennials to more news than they were initially seeking. Overall, just 47 percent who use Facebook say that getting news is the main motivation for visiting, but it has become one of the significant activities they engage in once they are there. Fully 88 percent of Millennials get news from Facebook regularly, for instance, and more than half of them do so daily.

Some people, particularly older Millennials, are more inclined to actively seek news, while others tend to let news find them, but virtually all Millennials employ a blend of both methods, as well as a mix of platforms and activities.

“Social media keeps me more informed than I could be with the other forms of news,” said Elese, a 25-year-old in Chicago. “By quickly scrolling through my feed, I can see the major stories going on. If I need to read deeper into it, I can go to a credible source’s website.”

69%of Millennials get news at least once a day

These are some of the findings of the study, which extends the work from the Media Insight Project’s 2014 Personal News Cycle to provide a deeper investigation of the news and information habits of Millennials age 18-34. For this work, researchers combined different research methods, including in-depth interviews in four different cities and a national survey.

Facebook is not the only social network Millennials use for news. On average, those surveyed get news from more than three social media platforms — including YouTube (83 percent), and Instagram (50 percent), and places of active involvement such as Reddit.

While social media plays an enormous role — and for some topics a preeminent one — in how Millennials learn about the world, the research also reveals that this manner of encountering news is not strictly passive or random. People actively navigate and make choices about which sources in their social media feeds they consider to be reliable, and they take other steps of participating in the news as well, including posting news stories, commenting on them, liking or favoriting them, and forwarding them to others.

People have always “discovered” news events partly by accident, by word-of-mouth, or by bumping into it while watching TV news or listening to the radio, and then turning to other sources to learn more. Technology, and the facility with which Millennials use it, has made this mix of random and intentional learning far greater.

“Social media has evolved a lot,” said Marilu, a 29-year-old in Chicago. “Before, it would be all about you. Now it’s about a lot of sharing articles, sharing of videos, sharing of memes. There’s a lot of that.”

Among the study’s findings:

While Millennials are highly equipped, it is not true they are constantly connected. More than 90 percent of adults age 18-34 surveyed own smartphones, and half own tablets. But only half (51 percent) say they are online most or all of the day.

Email is the most common digital activity, but the news is a significant part of the online lives of Millennials, as well. Fully 69 percent report getting news at least once a day — 40 percent several times a day.

Millennials acquire news for many reasons, which include a fairly even mix of civic motivations (74 percent), problem-solving needs (63 percent), and social factors (67 percent) such as talking about it with friends.

Contrary to the idea that social media creates a polarizing “filter bubble,” exposing people to only a narrow range of opinions, 70 percent of Millennials say that their social media feeds are comprised of diverse viewpoints evenly mixed between those similar to and different from their own. An additional 16 percent say their feeds contain mostly viewpoints different from their own. And nearly three-quarters of those exposed to different views (73 percent) report they investigate others’ opinions at least some of the time — with a quarter saying they do it always or often.

Facebook has become a nearly ubiquitous part of digital Millennial life. On 24 separate news and information topics probed, Facebook was the No. 1 gateway to learn about 13 of those, and the second-most cited gateway for seven others.

At the same time, younger Millennials express growing frustration with Facebook, and there are signals in the research that the use of social media will continue to splinter with time. Younger Millennials use more social networks (an average of four) than older ones (who average three). They are also more likely than older ones to have cut back on their social media use or dropped a social network completely. In our longer interviews, these younger Millennials describe Facebook like a utility they have to use rather than one they enjoy.

When Millennials want to dig deeper on a subject, the search is the dominant method cited by 57 percent (and it is the one cited most often as useful), followed by news sites (23 percent). Only 7 percent cite-checking Facebook to learn more.

And when Millennials do dig deeper, the most important qualities that make a destination useful are that they know the source well (57 percent) and that this digital source is transparent and rich with references and links (52 percent).

Millennials, however, do not worry much about privacy. Only 2 in 10 worry a good deal about privacy in general. And when asked about specific concerns, only 22 percent worry even a little about government surveillance; 30 percent worry even a little about corporate America knowing too much about them. The biggest worry, 38 percent, is identity theft.

Despite this lack of overall concern, the vast majority of Millennials (86 percent) have changed their behavior online, mostly to control what people know about them. Fifty-two percent have changed their privacy settings, while 37 percent say they are now more likely to remove information or photos of themselves that are embarrassing or immature.

“News and information are woven into an often continuous but mindful way that Millennials connect to the world generally, which mixes news with social connection, problem solving, social action, and entertainment.

About the study

This study was conducted by the Media Insight Project, a collaboration between the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. It included two components — a quantitative survey of Millennials nationwide and qualitative interviews and follow-up exercises with small friend groups of Millennials in Chicago, Illinois; San Francisco and Oakland, California; and at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. The researchers sought to supplement the quantitative survey research with a qualitative component to obtain a deeper understanding of Millennials’ online lives and news consumption habits.

The survey reached 1,045 adults nationwide between the ages of 18 and 34. Study recruitment was completed through a national probability telephone sample, while the main portion of the questionnaire was administered online. The margin of error was +/- 3.8 percentage points.

The qualitative component included three semi-structured group interviews conducted in Chicago, Illinois, on December 11, 2014; two conducted in San Francisco, California, on January 7, 2015; two conducted in Oakland, California, on January 7-8, 2015; and three conducted at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, on January 22, 2015. A total of 23 Millennials were interviewed. Select participants in each of the locations also consented to complete follow-up activities. These activities included 1) a self-reflection, interview, and essay exercise about news attitudes and behaviors, and 2) a news story tracking diary. These exercises were intended to gather additional information about how these Millennials think about news and information, what news and information are important to them, and how they follow a news story of interest. A total of 10 participants completed one of the follow-up exercises.

All point estimates described in the report are derived from the nationally representative survey of adults age 18 to 34. All quotes specified in the report are derived from qualitative research. A full description of the study methodology can be found at the end of the report.

Go to our website: www.ncmalliance.com

How Millennials Get News: Inside the habits of America’s first digital generation This research was conducted by the Media Insight Project — an initiative of the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research…

0 notes

xoidua · 5 years

Text

How do I stay sane on the information superhighway?

A month ago, I read an article written by Angus Hervey on Future Crunch with the title “The Information Diet”. It stroke the right note in conveying the brutal truth: We are drowning in a chaotic pool of information.

As with everything in life, we can only truly process information through moderate input. However, it is so hard to control how information can come through to us. In fact, we receive new information mostly passively, through social media networks, TV and radio.

The Original Information Diet

This is when The Information Diet comes into action. It is a guideline on how we can keep ourselves informed and where we can find more trustworthy sources.

The Information Diet by Angus Hervey suggests that a healthy diet should consist of:

Mindset = dietary philosophy aka “a central organizing principle” around which to create the diet

Books = wholewheat grains

Email newsletters = vegetables

Podcasts = leafy greens

Reddit = beans and pulses

Specialist publications = fruit

Social media = junk food

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

-- quoting Michael Pollan in “In Defense of Food”, The Information Diet encourages people to “eat” healthily and in moderation.

My version of The Information Diet

Before having discovered the article, I had already realized my problem with information overload. There were times when I found myself reading too many things, yet I could not remember a damn thing I’d read. I was overwhelmed by the amount of information coming at me through all angles: Facebook/Instagram/LinkedIn newsfeed, newspapers, radio, email newsletters, etc. (luckily I don’t watch TV, or else it would have been another strain on my poor attention).

I felt like a rotten VW Beetle on the information superhighway.

During an episode of immense frustration, I decided to review all of my information sources. After all, we can never know everything because knowledge is infinite, so the least I could do for myself is to entertain my brain with the most relevant things.

I started by jotting down my problem zones aka things that annoy me the most, both in degree of frustration and frequency of disturbance. It came down to these:

I spent way too much time scrolling mindlessly through my Facebook newsfeed. I’ve already unfollowed all trivial pages and prioritized more “informational pages” by marking them as “see first” pages. Somehow, the better posts would run out in no time and I would go back to watching meaningless short clips and cracking up at countless memes. At the back of my mind, I knew I should stop scrolling and get real stuff done. In reality, I wasted hours every day just by lying in bed with my phone hovering over my tired eyes.

My addiction to checking emails is real. I can’t help but keep my mailbox all-read and organized at all times. Add to that a dangerously large amount of email newsletters that I’ve subscribed to, and you’d find me pulling my phone out to check for new emails every 10 minutes. Not only did I subscribe to advertisement newsletters from brands, but there were also informational newsletters, which I used to justify my overuse.

I felt like I don’t have time to read books. Even when I did sit down with a book, my mind kept wandering and I couldn’t concentrate.

Step 1: Tackle the Facebook newsfeed

I’ve been actively not checking my Facebook newsfeed since December last year and I must tell you, it’s hard (duh). I deleted the Facebook app on my phone a long while ago, so every time I want to access Facebook, I must do it on my phone browser. It helped just a little, because I was still binging on the newsfeed occasionally. The difference between an app and the mobile site is not as significant as I thought.

Until The Information Diet brought the Newsfeed Eradicator to my life. It is God in the form of a browser plugin, whose sole mission is to eradicate the Facebook newsfeed from desktop and mobile browsers. Users are still able to view posts and everything else when they go directly to the user profiles and pages.

The Newsfeed Eradicator is truly the saver of my dilemma. Now, I can freely check my FB messages without being lured to scroll for just-a-little-bit on the newsfeed.

Eternal feed-less bliss

Step 2: Unsubscribe to irrelevant newsletters

There have been newsletters that I found useful in the past. For example, I subscribed to my favorite fashion brands to know when sales were to happen. Nowadays, I don’t support fast fashion anymore and thrift most of my clothes, so I can’t see myself subscribing to fashion brands’ newsletters anymore.

Step 3: Subscribe to more relevant newsletters

Now, this is the most important step to take on my journey to staying sane on the information superhighway. This is the part where I set down boundaries to keep me on track. Over time, I’ve accumulated a list of newsletters which I find informative, helpful and interesting to read.

To avoid being in a filter bubble, I prefer a variety of newsletters from authors of different backgrounds. My interests are technology, productivity, psychology, philosophy, and climate change, so I make sure that I receive numerous opinions about the same matter before deciding my own POV.

Here are my personal favorites:

TLDR

They really deliver what they claim. It takes under 10 minutes to go through the newsletter. All news are up-to-date and relevant.

TLDR is the first “techie” newsletter that I’ve subscribed to. I’ve recommended so many friends to check it out. The world that we live in is becoming increasingly influenced by technology. The digital transformation affects each and every one of us. Therefore, it makes so much sense to be informed.

Future Crunch

Of course, I have to mention Future Crunch. After all, it is where I found The Information Diet.

The team at FC introduces themselves on their homepage:

Future Crunch is a group of scientists, artists, researchers and entrepreneurs that believes science and technology are creating a world that is more peaceful, connected and abundant.

As a result, FC newsletters feature scientific and technology breakthroughs all over the world. It is nice to be reminded of the good things happening in a world where only breaking news can make headlines.

Dense Discovery

My inner nerd sang heavenly songs when I found out Dense Discovery – “a weekly newsletter helping web workers be productive, stay inspired, and think critically.”

Besides being abundant with useful information, DD itself is a beautifully crafted email newsletter in a very much friendly and readable format.

The header of the latest issue (Issue 41). I love it!

The Whippet by McKinley Valentine

At last, a worthwhile newsletter by a female author! McKinley Valentine is the woman whom I aspire to be. She writes eloquently and finds stuff you wouldn’t normally find on the internet. Her newsletters are a combination of her own writing and links to interesting stuff she’s been reading about, with absolutely zero mention of Trump or any other contemporary politics (her words).

Excerpt from the latest issue

There are some more newsletters that I subscribe to, but for the sake of this lengthy post, I decided to feature my most favorites here. If you are interested in knowing more or are looking for newsletters about a certain subject, be sure to check out The Information Diet article. You will find an exhaustive list of recommended newsletters.

My advice for beginners: Start with a few and slowly add more along the way. If you subscribe to a bunch of newsletters all at once, you may feel overwhelmed when your inbox is flooded with information. You can’t just trick the brain into acknowledging that reading these newsletters is good for you. It already knows. But upon a huge pile of information and potential overload, your brain will automatically protect itself by refusing to process anything. Also, remember to keep your newsletters in check from time to time. If you stop reading a certain newsletter, be sure to find out why and unsubscribe if necessary.

Step 4: Befriend podcasts & audiobooks

This step is solely personal preference. Because I’m having trouble reading physical books, I turn to audiobooks to temporarily solve my problem.

I think that my attention ability has been damaged by my endless scrolling on social media, to the point that I can’t concentrate to read a few book pages anymore. While I slowly reintroduce my brain to long-form reading (by reading rather lengthy articles and newsletters), audiobooks are here to save the day.

I don’t force myself to hear audiobooks all the time nor do I set any goals. I just listen when I feel like it. This mentality results in me voluntarily listening to an audiobook whenever I’m commuting, standing in line or running errands. I’ve been a productivity freak in the past, and boy oh boy did it mess me up. Nowadays, I know better than to force my brain to do stuff it doesn’t want to. Surprisingly, I can get more stuff done without feeling like I have to do anything at all. There are days when I just want to be a sloth, and that’s totally fine. We are not our productivity.

Back to audiobooks: I prefer ones that are narrated by the authors because they certainly know the tone better than anyone else.

If you are new to audiobooks and don’t want to commit to a subscription service like Audible yet, there are many good audiobooks on Youtube to try out. What I do: I download these audiobooks as .mp3 file, then listen on my phone via an app called BookPlayer. It’s super easy to use and doesn’t gobble up much precious battery juice.

-----

We made it, friends! I’ve told you all my secrets in staying sane in a world that’s seemingly isn’t.

I can’t speak any better for the necessity of an information diet. We should stay well-informed and practice our critical thinking ability before the information flood gets ahead of us.

Between a skillful driver who stays on the right track, a careless driver who speeds and a miserable drive who blocks the way, who do you want to be on the information superhighway?

Original post on my blog.

------------------------- Cảm ơn các bạn đã quan tâm. Youtube: https://youtube.com/c/beeline92 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/xoiduamedia/ Website: http://xoidua.com

#Tin tức #Tin tuc #Story #Truyện #Truyen

0 notes