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jyndor · 2 months

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Hi, saw your post on liberation movements and the ideology behind them - especially Palestine.

As a Ukrainian, you’ve had one of the most rational posts I’ve seen. It’s very disheartening to see the very same people and countries who rightfully call out Israel as a colonialist state which needs to be condemned simultaneously justify or overlook what Russia does to us, and has been for hundreds of years.

All liberation movements should be supported, and it should be of consistent standards. South Africa as you said, should bring Israel to justice, but it’s immoral for them to simultaneously engage in exercises and trade with Russia the same year Russia blockaded and starved Mariupol and raped and tortured women and children in Bucha.

Freedom to all people, from West Papua, to Myanmar to Palestine and Ukraine

Thank you, and I am sorry for what you are going through at the hands of Russia - anyone who denies Russian imperialism is wildly off base.

I've talked about the reasons why I think people who otherwise care about liberation in general are not as supportive of Ukraine as imo we all should be, and I think there's reason for the west to reflect on why it "cares" about Ukraine (the west does not really care about Ukrainians though ofc smdh) and not Palestine or Sudan or Congo or Armenia or West Papua etc etc etc, and it is obviously racism. but that does not mean Ukrainians are not fighting an imperialist aggressor. It is morally just for all to fight their occupiers and colonizers period.

now when it comes to less powerful/global south states aligning with Russia, Iran and/or China... this is where I'm going to kindly push back a tiny bit, or at least maybe give some perspective on this support even though I don't feel good about it and I don't like it lol.

A lot of these countries are getting aid and investment from Russia and China. It's neo-colonialism imo and no one has ever been able to convince me otherwise; sorry weirdos Russia and China (and to a lesser extent Iran) are not supporting these global south countries because they believe in anti-imperialism and resistance (lmao) but because they want to shore up support against the west amongst nations that have been oppressed and brutalized by the west. I'm not going to condemn them for accepting money and not wanting to sour relations with them.

I mean we could say the same about Ukraine accepting aid from the US and other European nations (all of which have that power and aid to give because of stolen wealth through colonialism, slavery and imperialism - and have had the most negative impact on the world). That CLEARLY has informed the government of Ukraine's support of Israel in the past few years, even with the caveats that I am aware that Ukraine's large Jewish population does tend to support zionism and Israel, and that of course there is a large Ukrainian population in Israel, as well as Zelenskyy personally supporting Israel. But in general that doesn't explain why Ukrainians support Israel at least according to the polling I've seen.

This Kyiv-based KIIS poll of just over 1000 Ukrainians from December is stark - 66% of ukrainians support Israel, 1% support Palestinians, 18% support both sides equally and 12% weren't sure. Now this poll or organization is clearly biased in favor of Israel, from this... interesting (lol) takeaway:

I mean obviously one poll is not really indicative of anything, but I'm not terribly surprised. This is why I stress the importance of liberatory politics, because anyone with eyes can see that Israel is the aggressor here, same as Russia in Ukraine. But I'm also gonna give some grace to people currently fighting off an aggressor of their own. Doesn't excuse it, I wish world leaders would be more consistent, but it is what it is.

I see more support from Palestinians to Ukrainians than vice versa, and of course there are Ukrainian Palestinians and Palestinian Ukrainians, and idk how they feel about the idiots discoursing on tumblr dot com but hopefully they don't bother with it lol. You all - Ukrainians, Palestinians - have way more important things to deal with and don't need us internet weirdos getting on you all about this shit.

The rest of us? We can and should reflect on why we support various liberation movements and not others. Everyone should be free - I don't care if Ukraine gets funding from a totally cancelable #problematic shithole country like the United States of Hell, I'm happy we are on the right side of this... and I'm furious that politicians here are trying to tie Ukraine aid to fucking Israel genocide money and so-called border security funding (although my understanding is that got dropped thanks to Republicans being unhinged lol thank god). I am not going to blame Ukrainians for being mad about the holdup here, but also... idk man it's a good thing Israel didn't get more aid, and it's very good that our stupid border hawks didn't get their way either. I think it would be horrible if Ukrainian liberation had the cost of aiding a genocide. And I hate that preventing more genocide aid to Israel in this case meant preventing Ukraine from getting aid.

Unfortunately geopolitics are very, very messy and every country that isn't a global power depends on powerful countries for something. It's not about morality. Which is why states suck and should be abolished lol but that's another topic for another day.

Thank you for sharing anon, sorry for being wordy. I would love to hear what you think about any of this or of course anything.

#asks #anonymous #ukraine #slava ukraini #free palestine #shockingly these are not mutually exclusive *smacks haters*#genocide #israeli occupation #us imperialism #western imperialism #western chauvinism #re: that weird poll takeaway lol #russian imperialism #imperialism #colonialism

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randommusingsstuff · 1 year

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Devi, Ben, and the Power of Happy Endings

Never Have I Ever is about to go down in the history books as one of the most thematically rich coming of age stories produced in the streaming era.

While the thought of parting from my beloved, Devi Vishwakumar, makes me want to curl into a fetal position, I’ve been struck with the sudden inspiration to document my predictions. Every wild, outrageous opinion.

Maybe this post will be nothing more than fodder for your morning coffee Tumblr scroll, but my hope is that it will convey a sense of optimism. Not only do I think that Never Have I Ever will have an explicitly romantic ending for Ben and Devi, I think that it fundamentally has to. But we still have a long journey ahead.

1. Devi: T-minus 5 Seconds to Heartbreak

This is Devi Vishwakumar, walking into school for her first day of senior year, smiling like the lovestruck nerd that she is, having finally figured out that she wants to be with Ben.

I mean, just look at her gloat! This is the gloat of someone who is ready to join forces with her soulmate so they can terrorize the school with their combined obnoxiousness!

Only to walk in and see this:

Oh Ben... To quote the great Logan Echolls, “no one writes songs about the ones that come easy”.

2. To boink, or not to boink?

I’m not convinced that Ben and Devi had sex.

Now, hold on-

Let me first caveat and say that Never Have I Ever always manages to surprise me. While I can pick out the broad narrative strokes and character arcs they are aiming for, they manage to awe and delight me with the details.

I think that following through on the “one free boink” scene is the more interesting route, but it also makes the writers’ jobs much, much harder.

I cannot fathom Ben and Devi having sex and then Ben immediately rebounding to Margot. That level of womanizing would make Paxton Hall-Yoshida tremble in his tiny swim shorts. In order to keep the audience on Ben’s side, the writers would have to spend a considerable amount of time unpacking his trauma and explaining his perspective. It’s not impossible, but I’m dubious.

The show never rewards Devi for making a decision based on her own insecurities. She wants to have sex with Ben, but her catalyst for getting there is the sext Fabiola accidently sends to her instead of Addison (i.e Devi is insecure about being the only virgin in her friend group left).

Maitreyi confirmed that season 4 would pick up immediately where season 3 left off. Do I think we’re getting play-by-play? An under-the-cover post boink scene? Them starting to make-out then something happening? I’m betting on the latter.

3. The Ben Problem

Picture this:

Mid make-out, Devi casually lets slip that she is staying at Sherman Oaks for senior year. Suddenly, sex with the love of his life is an actual relationship that he has to contend with. All the trauma and pain from season 2 comes flooding back. And it’s important to remember that Ben was deeply traumatized from the events of season 2.

His actual brain catches up with his er… primal instincts, and they agree to see where things go. It's just vague enough that Devi thinks they’re going to be together, but Ben is scared. Scared of being more in love with her than he already is and scared of being hurt again. He goes with the safer option of neglecting his feelings, because his arc of vulnerability has yet to be fully actualized.

This manages to set up the same conflict and angst between Ben and Devi and give Ben a starting point to make amends without having him abandon Devi right after she has sex for the first time.

It’s a much more palatable fallout for the “one free boink scene”, but I digress.

4. Never Have I Ever... Been a Wallflower

We catch up with Paxton in episode 3, narrated by Gigi Hadid, and he’s kind of shy?

He has always used his popularity as a crutch and now has to grapple with his new identity. Much like Devi and Ben, Paxton’s insecurities are an ongoing battle, as he realizes that his choice to go to college was partially defined by his desire to escape the “dumb jock” label. Tucked away in his dorm room, watching life pass him by, he realizes that he doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone else. He can pursue his athletic aspirations and still defy the labels that people have placed on him. By the end of the episode, Paxton makes the decision to come back to Sherman Oaks as a swim coach assistant.

I’ll admit, I think it’s a strange choice to reignite Devi and Paxton’s romance by making him a faculty member at the school. The writers might as well hold up a big red sign that says, “The only reason we can think of for Devi and Paxton to interact is if they are stuck in high school together”.

But I want to make one thing clear: I do not think this undoes his arc from season 3. To realize that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you have to is a very natural extension of gaining personal liberty.

And I, for one, am proud of him.

Also, I’m getting season 2 vibes from this scene.

Devi and Paxton fans can probably expect callbacks, sweet moments, a kiss, and an emphasis on how important they have been to each other's personal growth.

5. Where are Ben and Devi?

Hidden behind a Michael Cimino-sized red herring. They are going to give us as little as they possibly can about Ben and Devi during promo season. The same way they have in *checks notes* every single season prior.

I’ve written about this before, but it is integral to their individual arcs that they are honest about their love for each other. It is the bedrock of the story. But between Michael Cimino’s washboard abs and closing out Paxton and Devi’s arc in a way that feels satisfying and emotionally resonant, I don’t think we’ll be seeing Ben and Devi’s domestic bliss phase.

Put another way: The love triangle and push-and-pull romance is not a side story, it’s a source of narrative conflict that’s integral to the plot. Would you resolve the final battle in a fantasy series three episodes before the finale? Resolving the Ben and Devi plot early would be like sucking all of the tension out of the story. It would not give us the euphoric high of Ben and Devi blurting out that they love each other at the eleventh hour after trying to suppress their feelings. The show has always saved these big moments for finales, and this season will be no different.

But for anyone worried that Ben and Devi will be fighting the entire season, I think we’re in for our most Benvi-centric season yet, filled with great moments and their trademark banter.

They go to New York to visit colleges. Neither of them admits it, but they are relieved to know that they will remain constants in each others’ lives.

They study for finals together while bantering, skirting around the topic of prom, and just generally being the only two idiots who don’t know they are in love. *Buries self under 10 pounds of cement*

This time, Ben asks her to dance. The angst, unspoken feelings and tension are palpable.

They fight over valedictorian and it’s practically foreplay. Devi wins, and Ben is proud of her, underscoring his growth and ability to put aside his competitive nature to be supportive.

And that is just a fraction of what’s in store for our obnoxious, loveable nerds.

6. 🎶 It's the circle of life 🎶

“Hey, gods. It's Devi Vishwakumar, your favorite Hindu girl in the San Fernando Valley. What's a-poppin'? It's the first day of school, and I thought we should have a check in. I think we can all agree that last year sucked for a number of reasons. So I thought of a few ways you guys can make it up to me.”

“One: I'd like to be invited to a party with alcohol and hard drugs. I'm not gonna do them. I'd just like the opportunity to say: ‘No cocaine for me, thanks. I'm good.’”

John Mcenroe Voice: Devi, you seem a little drunk.

“Two: I'd love for my arm hair to thin out. I know it's an Indian thing, but my forearms look like the frigging floor of a barber shop.”

The mehndi on her hands symbolizes her love for her family and heritage. Juxtaposed with her western clothes, it signifies her acceptance of her intersectionality.

“And lastly, most importantly, I'd really, really like a boyfriend, but not some nerd from one of AP classes.”

The picture that I want to get my hands on is currently stashed away in Netflix’s top-secret headquarters, but I’ll settle for this one of Ben’s adorable, dopey smile.

7. The Finale: Why Devi and Ben Must Have an Unambiguously Happy Ending

For the longest time, I believed that Never Have I Ever would go the way of its spiritual successor Crazy-Ex Girlfriend and give Devi the “I choose myself” ending” with hints of her ending up with Ben in the future.

It was only when watching the season 3 finale that I realized how wrong I was. In fact, I was so fundamentally wrong that I overlooked the obvious: Never Have I Ever has never done anything halfway. The writers of Never Have I Ever know something about the audience that we often fail to recognize ourselves, which is that we desperately want a happy ending.

Season one could have ended with Devi’s heartfelt goodbye to her father and reconciliation with her mother. What do we get instead? A sweeping, romantic shot of Malibu while Devi and Ben share their first kiss.

In the season 2 finale, Devi proclaims that she will not settle for “some weird secret thing behind closed doors” and that she wants to be “someone's public girlfriend.” And what does she get? Exactly what she wants.

But it’s only in season 3 when this pattern becomes apparent. The season could have easily ended with her deciding to stay at Sherman Oaks. We had already said our farewell to Paxton, and gotten this chemistry-choked, almost-love-confession between our favourite dorks:

And we think that maybe, just maybe, the season will end with Devi single and ready for her senior year. But the show says “subtlety be damned”. It demands a triumphant ending, with Devi showing up at Ben’s door, leading to what will certainly be one of the most intimate moments in the entire show.

Tonally, the story makes bold choices, and the reaction from fans is always electric. In a world of being told “no” and being conditioned to temper our expectations, Never Have I Ever is like a warm hug reminding us that even the most broken people can heal and find love.

And this brings us back to “the Ben problem”, the idea is that he must overcome his fear and confess his love to Devi. And Devi, in turn, must love herself before being able to embrace her narrative mirror.

On a show that prides itself on big endings, escapism, and romance it seems unfathomable, and almost cruel, for Devi and Ben to be in love and not be together.

The writers do not want people finishing the show, shrugging, and saying “that was a realistic ending.” They want us to watch the finale with grins too big for our faces, our hearts bursting with excitement. They want us to know that all of Ben and Devi’s suffering over the past four seasons meant something, that when Devi finally makes the right decisions, she “will find someone who loves her exactly as she is.”

Love, unvarnished and without fear. That is the true narrative promise of Never Have I Ever.

#never have i ever #benvi #ben x devi #nhie #benvi meta #devi vishwakumar #ben gross

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tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 25 days

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hi! I want to familiarise myself with John Robins's work, I was wondering if you could recommend a good starting point? the radio show? standup? just thought to ask you, my favourite comedy connoisseur! thanks :)

Oh wow, I thought you’d never ask! By which I mean, when you spend as much time as I do putting completely unsolicited screeds into the internet that I’m pretty sure are of interest only to me, it is rather fun to write one for someone who has specifically said they want to read it. Though I don’t know if you’ll feel the same way by the end of the post, given my penchant for detail and the multiple unnecessary caveats that I’m already planning for this. I will add a cut to spare everyone else the unnecessary detail.

Okay, so. Weird thing about me, given the current state of my blog, I actually disliked John Robins for the first few years that I knew who he was. That is because the first time I saw him was on Mock the Week, where he appeared alongside Sara Pascoe just as their relationship was about to collapse, and he was an absolute dick about it. So definitely don’t start with that. I mean, Sara Pascoe also wasn’t great in that episode, but I already knew and liked her, so I forgave her. I had no such goodwill toward John Robins, and it completely turned me off him for a long time. After that I saw him pop up on other shows once in a blue moon, but found him annoying because I’d already decided I didn’t like him based on Mock the Week. Definitely do not watch him on Mock the Week.

What turned me around was in November 2022, when I came across a copy of The Darkness of Robins, his 2017 stand-up show that won the big Edinburgh award and was made into a Netflix special. I really, really loved it. I remember making a post at the time when I said this is the fastest I’ve ever turned around on any famous person, the biggest swing from disliking them to thinking they’ve made one of my favourite stand-up shows ever.

After that, I did exactly what you’ve done here, which was ask around on Tumblr for where you can go if you’ve just decided you want more John Robins if your life. Because I knew he had a radio show on one station and then another station with that guy who’s (not) married to Isy Suttie, but I also knew those had about 150,000 hours (slightly exaggeration) worth of episodes and obviously no one has time to listen to all that, that would be absolutely ridiculous, what sort of fool would take that on? Obviously I could have just jumped in at the most recent episodes of their radio show, which is something you could do as well if you want, but my brain’s relentlessly completist nature wouldn’t let me do that. I needed something I could watch/hear all of, but have that be under 150,000 hours.

I asked Tumblr about this, and the best recommendation I got was to check out A Robins Amongst the Pigeons. This started as a feature on his radio show in which he read out loud from the autobiography of broadcaster Tony Blackburn, which was meant to be a serious book, but it’s so self-important and unintentionally hilarious that John got quite a few good weeks worth of content from reading out bits to make fun of them (if this seems mean, it helps to know that one of the passages he read said women working outside the home is bad for children, so I don’t feel bad for the guy). Later on, John Robins mentioned that he’d learned the writers of the Alan Partridge autobiography – I, Partridge – had based it partly on Tony Blackburn’s book.

After he finished reading the Blackburn autobiography, John Robins started to write his own autobiography, “in the style of Tony Blackburn”, and read out a chapter each week on the radio. Basically, John Robins is a huge Partridge fan and took the opportunity to write out his own life story the way Alan Partridge would tell that life story, and it’s really, really funny. It’s a good introduction to John because it goes through his life and lets you know what he’s like, and that gives you an idea of what sort of things he’ll say if you get into the rest of his work. And it’s also a good introduction to John because it’s really, really funny. If you listen to that and don’t find it funny, you probably won’t like the rest of his stuff.

Someone on YouTube compiled all the clips of John reading chapters from A Robins Amongst the Pigeons, and put them on YouTube so you can hear the all as one long string:

youtube

I downloaded that YouTube video, converted it to mp3, put it on my phone and listened to it like an audiobook. My biggest recommendation for someone who wants an introduction to John Robins would be that you do the same. He’s also released it as a paperback book, and did a few live performances where he read it out loud to an audience back when he first wrote it (2015), which is good because it’s too funny to have remained just a feature on a weekly radio show.

The next thing I did when getting into John Robins was go to his Bandcamp page, where he’s released three of his old stand-up shows:

They’re his 2013, 2014, and 2015 Edinburgh shows, with the dates listed on Bandcamp all being from a year later because they were recorded on tours the following years. I think they noticeably get better with each year, and his writing and delivery skills improve. Speakeasy is objectively the best one, Where Is My Mind not quite as good but still made me laugh more than a lot of stand-up hours do. This Tornado Loves You is, I think, not quite objectively as good as Speakeasy. But might edge Speakeasy out as my favourite of the three because it hits some things that I subjectively really love in stand-up.

He did a stand-up show in 2019 called Hot Shame, which I'd really really love to hear, but he's said he never recorded a version that was far enough along, with high enough audio quality to publish (though personally, I would happily take a version with shit audio quality and/or early WIP). In 2023, he did a stand-up show called Howl, which he's recently said he has on audio recording and is planning to publish on Bandcamp at some point, but it's not there yet. I am very much looking forward to hearing that one when it come out.

(Disclaimer: This Tornado Loves You has a routine about PMT/PMS where I see what he was trying to do, it’s not just an average “women be crazy on their periods” routine, he says it with an understanding that the victim here is the woman suffering from painful symptoms, and has said similar things at other times. However, I don’t think the stand-up routine does enough of that to make up for the inherent shitty-ness of a cis man making a joke about his girlfriend getting disproportionately emotional on her period, and I just want to clarify that, because I don’t want anyone to listen to that stand-up show, hear that routine, remember that I said that stand-up show is my favourite of all the Bandcamp releases by one of my favourite comedians, and therefore, I must think cis men telling jokes like that is a good idea. I don’t, I think that was a misstep in an otherwise great show.

The reason I add this caveat is because in the last months, I’ve had three different people watch The Darkness of Robins at my recommendation, and all of them came back with the comment… so this thing that you’ve been calling one of your favourite shows ever – did you mean to go so hard on endorsing a show that ends with a really inappropriate amount of sexual detail about Sara Pascoe, a woman whose name the audience knows, and it’s probably not cool for him to be saying that about her in public? Because this has happened before, I feel the need to say, again, in case anyone watching Darkness of Robins as a result of this post: I don’t love the part at the end where he describes sex with a person the audience can identify in an inappropriate amount of detail. When I endorse the show, I do not endorse that. I hope he asked her if it was cool to talk about that on stage before he did so, but I don’t know if he did, and I have a feeling he probably didn’t. Having said that, I recently watched a bunch of Sara Pascoe’s stand-up from across the years, and I hugely enjoyed it because she’s very funny, but I also learned more sexual details than I wanted to know about John Robins from her stand-up, so I would argue that they are, at best, even in terms of inappropriate talking about each other on stage. Also, for anyone who’s reading this but hasn’t seen the show, I’d like to clarify that it’s not like he goes on some misogynistic rant about her, he just describes sex with her in detail that gets a bit graphic for a couple of minutes.

While I’m caveating, I’ll just throw all my disclaimers in together, I did also have someone watch Darkness of Robins and say they were surprised I liked it so much because the stuff near the beginning, where he talks about how his relationship fell apart, feels a bit like the misogynistic stand-up trope of Man Complains About His Girlfriend For Being Less Logical And Rational Than Him. I’d like to say I actually stand by that routine, he’s built quite a bit of his comedy on talking about how he is compulsively and maladaptively meticulous about everything and is therefore more logical than everyone, he spends half his radio show complaining about how Elis James isn’t logical enough and doesn’t put enough thought into planning and organizing and getting everything right, that’s not a gender thing, that’s just his thing. A lot of his comedy is about his obsession with being precise about everything to the point of overthinking that ruins his life, and if you are reading this post in which I’ve just spent three paragraphs adding unnecessary caveats because I get paranoid about anything I say being misinterpreted, you might understand why that appeals to me so much.

Summary: I do not endorse the menstruation routine of 2014 or some of the sex details of 2017, but I do endorse the many parts of his comedy in which he comes off as an exhausting nightmare, that is very much part of the appeal, though it may not appeal to everyone.)

Besides his stand-up, he’s done some guest appearances on TV, radio, and podcasts. I was about to start listing the ones I’ve found, though it’s probably easier to just give you a screenshot of my folders of his audio guest spots:

and TV guest spots:

I've watched/listened to everything in those folders up to October 2018, since I'm currently working through the radio shows and going through all those other things chronologically alongside it, so I haven't seen the things past 2018 and can't speak to what's in them. Technically, it's possible that he became a flat Earther. So there's another disclaimer: any views expressed by John Robins after October 2018, I haven't heard and cannot endorse. But there's definitely some good stuff in the earlier years.

If any of the shows in the above screenshots are one you already like, then tracking down John Robins' episodes of them is probably a good intro to John Robins (or send me a message if you want a link). Except that second Mock the Week one - don't watch that no matter how much you normally like Mock the Week.

Of his guest spots on TV and audio, a lot of the best ones are better if you're already familiar with John from his radio show or at least from his stand-up, but some hold up pretty well even without that context. His Live From The BBC episode is a shortened (half an hour instead of an hour) version of his Speakeasy show, if you want to see a (shortened) video version of that instead of hearing the audio (and if you are a completist like me, it has a bit of material that's not in the Bandcamp version so it's worth watching). His other TV stand-up guest spots are mainly just little repeats of stuff that's in his longer published shows, except the Russell Howard's Good News extra, which has an older routine that's not in his Bandcamp shows.

I'd say his episodes of Alan Davies' show are particularly fun, though warning that there is a story in the episode he did with Russell Howard that's really weird. There's also another story that he either stole from Adam and Joe, or he was the person who sent that story into Adam and Joe, and I fear it was probably the former, but he wouldn't be the first to steal someone else's story on As Yet Untitled.

On the subject of people who steal other people's stories on As Yet Untitled, I found him very very funny on Isy Suttie's podcast, though he was quite drunk and I can imagine a person with less tolerance for drunken shoutiness could find it annoying. He's good value on Pappy's, a lot of fun and usually drunk (pre-2023, at least). He has a nice rapport with Richard Herring. He played a really weird song on Jon Richardson's old radio show. He told us about a sex dream he had on The Horne Section podcast. And he bickered with his girlfriend on Do the Right Thing. I also thought the Robins/James episode of Comedian's Comedian was excellent (Robins and James both did individual ones that were also both good, but the one they did together is one of my favourites out of the 76 episodes of that podcast that I've heard (I almost wrote ~75 there so I could pretend I don't have a spreadsheet to know the exact number, but why pretend that at this point?)), but it gets pretty deep into stuff from their radio show, so probably isn't worth a listen unless you've heard that show.

John Robins also released a book in 2018, called The Holy Vible, co-written with his radio buddy Elis James. I'm currently nearly done listening to the audiobook of that, and to be honest, there's a lot of filler that will be of interest only to someone who's already very, very interested in whatever John and Elis have to say. Which I am, so I'm enjoying the book, but I definitely don't recommend it to anyone who's not already very much into the radio show.

And that brings me to the 150,000 hours of their radio show, since that's pretty much the only place left to go. It was early 2023 when I listened to his Bandcamp stand-up shows, said I love these and I loved Darkness of Robins and I loved A Robins Amongst the Pigeons, I guess the next step would have to be the radio. But I don't have 150,000 hours to spare to listen to all that. So I guess that's as far as I'm going with the Robins fandom. I even made a post in which I said "John Robins is dangerous - not in general, but to me", because I like him so much that at any moment I could slip down the radio rabbit hole, and then I'd lose 150,000 hours of my life. I held out for nearly a year after I wrote that post, but here I am now.

The radio show with John Robins and Elis James started out in February 2014 on the indie music radio station XFM. XFM rebranded as Radio X in 2015, and they continued to make the same show on Radio X until they left in February 2019. In May 2019, they began broadcasting pretty much the same show (I think, haven't heard it yet, he might be a flat Earther) on BBC Five Live. They continued to do that until the end of 2023, and in 2024, they started doing some other thing that I don't understand. They record it as a podcast first (as opposed to live radio that gets edited and released as a podcast, which is what they did from 2014 to 2023), and then highlights from the podcast get broadcast on the radio, and it's released twice a week, also there are videos, I don't know, I haven't got that far in the chronology. I'm still on October 2018.

I can say that the XFM/Radio X episodes they did between February 2014 and October 2018 are fun, engaging, very funny, often interesting, and I think have been worth the several months of my life it's taken me to listen to them. They go up and down, like anything else that's produced that many hours - there have been a few times when I've thought the show was in a bit of a slump and hasn't been that funny for a couple of months, but just as I'm thinking that, they'll pick it up and do a run of like eight great episodes in a row. Overall, in my subjective opinion, they've had far more strong periods than weak ones. They have a great dynamic with each other and with the features. They spend too much time reading out emails but that's going to happen on a radio show. I'm not particularly into their food tasting segments but that's just because food shows don't generally appeal to me, I love their running quiz segments because competitive features do appeal to me. Your mileage may vary. Also, you don't have to do the relentless completist thing that I do. You could just jump in now at the latest episodes of whatever the hell their BBC show is now.

Oh, and he plays golf on YouTube with Alex Horne. I haven't watched that because I dislike golf and I haven't got there in the chronology yet, but I'll probably end up watching it at some point. A lot of people like it and I think it's probably funny, but I haven't seen it myself so I can't speak to that. It's called Bad Golf and you can find it on the internet.

To give a proper shot at answering the original question, which I now feel like was asked 100 years ago: I think the best introduction to John Robins is a Robins Amongst the Pigeons, linked above, that I recommend listening to like an audiobook. I did Darkness of Robins first, but I think the best order for a good introduction would be Robin Amongst the Pigeons first, to get a good overview of what he's like and what you're getting into with him, and you'll get that overview via 100 minutes that you'll either find very entertaining, or you won't and you'll know not to bother with the rest of his stuff.

After that, I'd say, if you have any completist tendencies, or tendencies like mine toward doing things in chronological order because I think everything is better if you have all the context for it first, then I would recommend listening to his Bandcamp shows in order (Where Is My Mind, then This Tornado Loves You, then Speakeasy), and then watching Darkness of Robins. If you're not bothered about that, just skip to Darkness of Robins because it's the best one. If you do all that and are still interested in finding more John Robins content, then I'm afraid you may have to set off on a journey to give up 150,000 hours of your life the way I have.

Well, there might be one other option. There are other clips and clip compilations from their radio shows, and while I personally have difficulty doing anything in clip form if I haven't gone through the full-length version first (Robins Amongst the Pigeons was an exception because that was its own thing, it was a collection of radio clips but they've also been released as their own book), some of those may be fun in isolation. You can flip through this playlist to find some of them (you can CTRL+F the word "complete" on that page to find compilations of their features and running topics):

One time, in a fairly early XFM episode, Elis informed the listeners that someone had written an email to the show that asked what their five favourite albums were, and John had written a reply that was an essay of several thousand words, and then apologized on the radio by saying there was no way this person wanted their inbox taken up by that much rambling. That may be what's happened here, the difference being that I don't have the status of a (then-future) Perrier-winning comedian to justify why anyone wants to read this many of my words. But still, I'm glad you asked.

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runwayrunway · 9 months

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No. 36 - Riyadh Air

No, they are not changing their name to Saudi Arabian Airways, but there is a new development on the Saudi Arabian flag carrier front.

That's right, Saudia is dead, sayonara you w-

No. That isn't true, that was a joke. But what isn't a joke is that Riyadh Air is a planned second flag carrier for Saudi Arabia.

That's mostly a joke. Other countries have multiple flag carriers, though that comes with a couple caveats. Usually when this happens one is full-service and international while the other is domestic and/or low cost. The UAE has two flag carriers, but one is Dubai's and the other is Abu Dhabi's, which feels like an important distinction.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, just has decided they want to operate a second airline instead of doing the normal thing and putting all their resources into one really good airline. I don't understand it. The plan is to keep Saudia based in Jeddah while Riyadh Air is based in Riyadh...again, plenty of airlines have multiple hubs, so I don't see the point. They claim to be the first "digital-native airline", which is shaped like words yet means nothing (also, take that up with David Neeleman and Breeze). They've nabbed Etihad's old CEO and bought a bunch of 787s, and the stated goal is to become the largest carrier in the Gulf region at an unprecedented blistering pace in order to increase tourism. Given Emirates's numbers...well, it's probably still more likely to happen than a startup airline operating exclusively A380s managing to turn a profit, but that's not saying much.

Anyway, they've got a livery! Apparently this is the first of two, so expect a follow-up post when the second one drops, but for now there's plenty to talk about as is.

Unlike many - nay, most - of the subjects I cover, Riyadh Air has made me do absolutely zero research. You do get modern liveries like jetBlue and Lufthansa with little style guides to weakly attempt to back up their relatively mundane graphic design choices and things like condor and Icelandair's lovely little webpages, but Riyadh Air has done them all at least one if not several better by not only explaining in detail where they got their inspiration but also giving me a high-res 3D model of their airplane that I can rotate and zoom in and out on.

Take care; my computer is fairly underpowered and I do have an absurd number of tabs open most of the time, but this did crash my browser multiple times. Even just opening the main page of their website makes my CPU sound like it's spooling up for takeoff.

Okay. First I want to discuss the logo. They've got a video up on their thought process. I had transcribed it, but it looks better in motion, and thankfully they've stopped making it autoplay (presumably because, as I mentioned, this website absolutely guzzles processor as is) and in the process made it possible for me to simply left-click it off their website and into this post. Don't worry about it killing your browser. It's a normal video in a normal tumblr post without a 100 million dollar website chugging along in the background.

(I've taken some screenshots in case anyone does have trouble with the video.)

Now this is how you design a logo. The airplane window thing feels, in retrospect, so obvious I can't believe nobody had done it yet. I think it pairs gorgeously with the R, and I love that they chose to take inspiration from Arabic calligraphy, which is not only a massive point of pride for cultures which utilize the script but also just generally gorgeous. (It looks a bit like a stretched backwards hamza to me.) The shape of the bird's wing is the part I have the most trouble actually connecting to what I'm seeing, but sure, I'll give it to them. What the heck. This logo is nice.

I mentioned when discussing China Airlines that very few airlines use lavender as a primary color. Well, here's one that does! They actually discuss this on their website as well:

Inspired by the lavender blossoms that carpet Saudi Arabia, we've chosen this color because it symbolizes Saudi generosity and its authentic hospitality.

And this is, again, pretty fantastic. This is a thoughtful choice which isn't lazy or arbitrary. It has the potential to really pack a visual punch, and it does the thing I love when flag carriers do - references a feature of its home nation.

An upside to the fact that the livery page takes eons for my computer to chew on is that I get shown this lovely loading screen, which demonstrates the fantastic combination of blues and purples which make up the full scheme of this airline's colors. I love the combination of these colors. Light saturated colors are rare enough, but to see extremely dark blues and purples together like this is a rare delight. It definitely has the potential to get eyestrainy, but if done well it could look absolutely breathtaking.

But will it be done well? After all, a good idea isn't always well-implemented - see condor - and China Airlines's livery fails for me because it's barely got any lavender! So does Riyadh Air fall into the same pit? Let's check the browser-destroying 3D model they've lovingly provided us.

I love that 3D model, by the way. Instead of looking for a bunch of pictures of airplanes that happen to be in the correct lighting and at the right angle to demonstrate the exact thing I'm attempting to discuss I can just...zoom in while putting the plane at the specific angle I want. Normally I actually try not to rely too heavily on things like style guides because a piece of flat-colored concept art isn't actually going to communicate how a plane looks in motion and with light on it, but this is a really really robust model. Sure, it's not quite as maneuverable as I'd like it to be, it's still not a perfect representation of real life, but it's really well made. It even sways side to side a bit and if you zoom in close enough you can see they bothered to model the external sensors and the engines are even turning! Don't worry about the fact that if you zoom in even further you can tell the engines are just a fan suspended floating in a cowling. They even added ambient engine sounds. This model is so cool it legitimately took me several minutes of turning it around and muttering "wow..." under my breath before I realized the environment it was sitting in was just some very stretched and crunchy jpgs.

Mmm, those reflections.

To be honest, I also just enjoyed playing with this thing. It's almost like having a real model plane, but doesn't cost more money than I have! But enough of that.

So they definitely didn't chicken out when it came to the lavender. This plane is as purple as a Breeze Airways plane is blue (it is very purple). It's not just a purple tube, though. Even from a distance you can see that there's added detail here.

I love the wordmark, first off. They've really committed to the billboard look with this gigantic text in both English and Arabic. I love it. With such an overwhelming main body color it feels prudent to make sure the name is as visible as possible so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle.

And with this gigantic, recognizable logo plastered on the bottom you'd be able to identify it just as well from below (and this is zoomed out as far as the website let me!). In fact, the depth of the design really shines best from below. That's not necessarily a good thing, because your plane does have to be parked sometimes, but it's not a dealbreaker either. I just need to say that this is probably my favorite design for an engine nacelle, ever. It's gorgeous, and you can see in the first picture how well it flows into the main design. They don't go together quite as well from the bottom, and from below the plane does look a bit rear-heavy and the wordmark peering in is a bit awkward, but none of those ruin it. I would be stunned if I saw this fly overhead.

The website provides a few details about the design if you zoom in and click little black dots. It took me ages to realize this. It's neither intuitive nor accessible and I truly despise it, so I've taken the liberty of transcribing the bits that matter.

You can turn this plane in any which way you'd like, zoom in and out, and the details on the bottom never stop being beautiful and coherent. It truly does remind me of calligraphy. As they describe it:

Rooted in our Heritage The controlled, smooth linear profiles make up our signature "Canopy Twist". A perfect balance of our rich local culture and our modern global outlook, connecting the city of Riyadh to the world.

I love the name 'Canopy Twist', to be honest. And I love the design, too. My one criticism of it is the colors. They already have an established secondary shade of purple. That they used the text color for the highlights makes sense, but why couldn't they have used their lavender instead of a third shade of purple? In the quantity used for the underside it feels disconnected from the rest of the livery and they could have fixed that very easily by just...using their already existing secondary shade of purple? I think it would make for a very nice bridge to the tail as well, and it just feels like a colossal missed opportunity.

You may have noticed that the bulk of the fuselage body is a color a bit darker than what might conventionally be considered 'lavender'. This, too, is noted.

Indigo Livery Inspired by the ever-changing colors that paint the sky from dusk till dawn. A symbol of tranquility, harmony and integrity.

(This color is obviously purple, not indigo, but I will not belabor that point.)

I love the description, the idea of the transition between dusk and dawn. Much like the window as a basis for a logo, this makes me go "why in the world has nobody thought of that before? That's brilliant!"

It makes me think a bit more could have been done in the details. Maybe the canopy twist could be a gradient, like the gradient of the sky while the sun is rising? Just a thought.

And ultimately it's the canopy twist that is my only real sticking point with this livery. It is beautiful and unique and well-designed and it is simply a color that sticks out like a sore thumb. It's the only warm thing creeping into a design otherwise full of beautiful cool tones, it has gorgeous flow within itself but breaks up the feeling of consistency through the airframe as a whole, and I just...I really wish it were lavender.

If that's my main issue you can do a lot worse. And overall I do like the Riyadh Air livery. If that one detail was changed, this would easily be an A. This review would be all but uncritical. Except for the fact that it could use a bit of canopy twist up top, too (maybe just a tiny bit on the top of the nose, flowing in the same direction) in order to make the plane feel less rear-heavy (though it already beats out the vast majority of liveries in that sense), the issue with the color is my only big criticism. But it's the main detail of the design, isn't it?

It's wild. So much of the time my reviews are "good details, bad when you step back". But this is the opposite. Fantastic, but there's that one detail that sticks with you. And the details by and large are far from bad too. I mentioned the nacelles, and I think it very elegantly transitions the tail into the body. It would be more elegant if the design on the body was the same lavender, though!

A few more nitpicks: the centering of the logo on the tailfin is a little strange, the tail would look better if it had a bit of a gradient to make it less matte-seeming, and the combined effect of those is very luxury-hotel-towel-monogram. Okay. I'm done complaining.

So it falls short of being one of the best I've ever reviewed, but I still really, really like it. The calligraphy inspiration creates these elegant sweeping lines that are perfectly at home on the 787. The deep purple looks luxurious despite the fact that Riyadh Air doesn't plan to offer first class. It's eyecatching. It's stylish.

And, now that I've covered all this, let's look at the colors in person! That's right, they've already had a plane delivered in full Riyadh Air colors.

The deep purple with the lighter canopy twist, combined with the tiny white dots of the various probes and such, make this plane look like an animal camouflaging itself against the night sky in a place untouched by light pollution. The light lavender contrasts sharply in this particular image, sharply enough that it feels like a slice cut out of the plane.

This continues to be an issue from other angles and in other lightings, but the cool-toned light makes this purple look like true indigo and the blueish cast improves the look, giving an almost fluorescent appearance to the transition between the twist and the tail. The way the light reflects off the dark paint makes it look rippling and shifting and alive in a way it never could off white.

In shadow, the plane looks as dark as a city sky. In light, the vibrant purple of a fresh eggplant. This paint job adapts wonderfully to its environment. Much like Vietnam Airlines's, each light brings out a unique beauty.

And sometimes, the tail, detached though it may look, does so in the way a shining arm of a spiral galaxy neatly transitions into the black expanse around it.

Riyadh Air's planes range from ultraviolet to supervoid, but they are never lost in their environment. The principles behind the design remain consistent, and beautiful, and alone in a sky full of planes which refuse to embrace the dark skies they fly in on red-eye journeys.

Ultimately, I think Riyadh Air's livery feels a bit overdesigned. They added one color too many, and a few decisions feel like they don't belong together in the same picture. Just think about the amount of colors here, the balance of major features, and think about Vietnam Airlines, and you'll see what I mean. I'm not a fan of minimalism, but sometimes the only way to keep a story straight is to minimize loose ends. A secret becomes exponentially more likely to be exposed with each new person who learns it.

But before I looked closer, before I zoomed in and out on a little 3D model while my computer screamed, I saw this livery for the first time and my jaw hit the floor. And the average person isn't going to think about this the way I do. Ultimately, my critical eye is usually something I defer to, but I can't argue with the fact that this livery is going to be to someone else what China Airlines is to me. And, like China Airlines, when they come back and look closer at it they'll notice it wasn't as perfect as they thought, but...we've come so far, if this is someone's China Airlines. And as much as I nitpick at details the package counts, too. If you asked me why China Airlines got a C- instead of a D+, my honest reason would be...it struck me enough that I singled it out to begin with, even though that started to fall apart when I looked closer.

Why am I giving Riyadh Air an A- instead of a B+? Because this plane will stun people 5,000 feet below it, and they'll think to themselves that it's the prettiest plane they've ever seen.

#tarmac fashion week #era: 2020s #grade: a-#region: middle east and north africa #region: saudi arabia #riyadh air #flag carriers #at least ostensibly flag carriers.

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sevdrag · 1 year

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spoilers: i am an engineer

hello tumblr, and welcome to the most well informed shitpost you're going to see today: some Fun With Data involving the Harry Du Bois vs Vriska poll that just went around.

We started watching the poll just as the swing in votes started to happen, and as such, we're missing some crucial data I'll be upfront about. The poll started at noon, and we didn't start taking in information until the percentages started to change, at 13:53, so we don't have information on total vote count for the first 2 hours of the poll. And in the rush to nerd out about this, our first few data points of the vote swing - where you see the most change - didn't have total vote count either. There is also a brief period where I had to take my cat to the emergency room, and a longer period where my ass slept because this is just a silly tumble poll. Those present as straight lines in charts like this, but keep in mind, they could have had wild variation for all I know. However, based on the results, I doubt it. Big thanks to @smolalienbee and @pass-the-salt and I think @orderlyhouse for screencapping this data and relentlessly spamming the discord with it so that I could put it in this spreadsheet like the nerd I am. (do YOU have screencaps? DM me!)

Early on in polls like this when total vote count is low, you expect to see big swings -- with 4000 votes total, for example, the amount you need to swing a vote 1% is 80 people. As these go up, however, obviously, the amount of votes needed to swing 1% increases. By the end of this poll, 1541 tumblr users would have had to make UNCOUNTERED votes, that were NOT cancelled out, to move the poll 1%.

According to our data, the swing you see above took place over a two-and-a-half hour period. For the remaining 20 hours of the poll, votes one way or the other weren't significant enough to be seen in the tumblr results.

For those who are interested, our first data point showing the 50/50 split hits at 16:21, when total votes were at 14194. From this point on, voters would have needed at least 248 UNCOUNTERED/NOT CANCELLED OUT votes to change the poll a single 1%. Just numbers to keep in mind! We talk about this at the end :)

Any winning margin smaller than 248 would, therefore, not register to tumblr. Keep in mind that by the end of the poll this number was 1541 votes required to swing a percentage, because the total vote pool grew so heavily.

In the end, as it turns out, after 77,019 votes, the poll was won with a margin of only 618 votes. final percentages were, surprisingly neatly, 50.4% v 49.6%. Won by 0.8%! Now that's a close poll.

(thanks to @mio-nika for grabbing these and @smolalienbee for confirming!)

Because I was additionally curious, and a huge nerd, I wanted to go in and calculate votes per minute to see whether there was anything weird going on. I am going to be polite and put this under a cut to save your dash from my utter nerd joy, but I have caveats to put in here first.

The first thing to keep in mind is that your data is only as good as your collection method! In our case, it was a very unprofessional method that went: someone took a screencap and posted it in Discord, and I entered it into a spreadsheet with the time entered as whatever time Discord registered it. While this ended up being pretty accurate for a 24-hour poll, it presents the problem that will come up when we start talking about votes per minute: I only could measure in increments of a minute, because getting into seconds here would have been (a) impossible and (b) super overkill. However, that means that there's more noise in the votes-per-minute data because everything is assumed to be in increments of 1 full minute. Good scientists acknowledge the weaknesses of their data sets as they do their analysis! (Source: I worked in research for 15 fucking years lol.)

Here is my ESTIMATE of votes per minute at each of the data points taken above. The green trendline is a rolling average that tells the story of the poll, more or less: Lots of quick voting at the beginning, calming down over the (American) evening, then ramping back up at the end. Much like we'd expect, I think.

(And again, remember that the bit in the middle where Americans AND Europeans were asleep presents as a straight line here but could be ALL over the place. We don't have that data because we were sleep like good feral grownups.)

The noise at the beginning, I suspect, is again because I'm measuring over small and discrete increments of time. However, unless Tumblr wants to help me develop an app dumping real-time poll results into my EXCEL 24/7, there's no reasonable way I can see to get around this. Because of the noise there's a big standard deviation on here that I'm too lazy to really dig into because I did all of this while I was supposed to be working for the government, so imagine your error bars appropriately.

So what does this mean?

Well, let's make a couple assumptions for conversational purposes. Looks like people were voting at about 50 votes per minute during the slow times, and up over 100 votes per minute during the fast times.

At the beginning of the 50/50 period, we would have needed 248 votes one way to see the percentage change. Votes per minute at this point were flying, at about 100 votes/minute. That's only (the equivalent of) 3 minutes of voting time that would have had to go SOLID for either Vriska or Harry to produce a 1% change we could see on the face of the poll. And while we certainly weren't watching it live, the density of our data for the next hour or so was pretty solid, and we didn't see a 1% change. We have screencaps, baby! 248 votes going one way or the other at this particular point is chump change at that speed, so it IS surprising that we didn't see more scatter around 49/51 for an hour or so before things settled in.

In fact, I would stretch to say it's unusual to have seen such an even curve as the percentages changed on their way to 50/50, in a case where a few minutes' worth of solid voters could still have an impact, but as this is the first time I've ever done anything like this on a fucking tumble poll, I am not putting money on that either.

If someone wants to pay me, I am more than happy to become a tumble poll expert!

At the end of the poll, votes were also flying in, on average about 80 votes per minute. At this point, we would have needed over 1500 votes one way or another to see a last-minute shift. That's (the equivalent of) 19 solid straight minutes of every single voter picking the same candidate. So at the end it is NOT surprising to not see any 49/51 fluctuation. This is why once polls settle in, they so rarely change. It's just statistics.

So, Sev. Was this poll botted? I don't fucking know. We all need to go outside. However, if you're going to make drama on it, please do it on this post so that I can see. I'm getting laid off in 2 days and I would love the distraction and entertainment!

And a big thanks to @handwrittenhello for all the work they put in to this, and personally for providing me with an opportunity to spend a day doing one of my favorite things: working with data in Excel!

#tumblr's plmm contest #statistics #the most detailed #shitpost #you'll ever see #I WILL SHITPOST SCHOOL YOUR ASSES

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jariktig · 1 year

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What happens on AO3 (stays on AO3)...

So, I have finally hit the end condition for my TF pairings sample - I’d estimated I’d have to go through about 100 pages of AO3 search (or around 4% of the total) to get to the point of finding 10 pages with no new pairings. It actually took 357, or around 15% of the total, or around a year’s worth of fics to search and some days of my free time, so I am going to get some use out of it if it kills me! Accordingly, while I’m waiting for Tumblr to give me polls so that I can run the Rare Pairs Battle Royale that was the original intent of the thing, I present some silly analysis, below the cut because it’s a bit long.

First, some caveats:

1. This is based entirely on fanfics as presented on AO3; no FFN, no Wattpad, no LJ etc and no canonicity except insofar as the patterns on AO3 match those in canon (which is very firmly left as an exercise for the reader);

2. It’s a sample survey, taken at a single point in time (around early Feb 2023; could look more exactly if anyone’s desperate to know). That means there will be some pairings that have appeared since (@quetzapapalotl’s Optimus Prime/Primus frex) and some that I’ve not yet picked up (a couple that I remember because I liked the relevant fics are Megatron/The Nemesis and Laserbeak/Swoop). That said, the big conclusions should be pretty robust at this stage and the list of rare pairs also won’t be greatly off. As an extra check I can put up a link to the latter and ask people to suggest additions;

3. I’ve excluded relationships including OCs (because I’d included foreign language fics and so reading through all the individual ones to try to disambiguate OCs was beyond me; also I didn’t want to read through a large number of Prowl/OC fics and the like), and relationships including generic types of TFs such as Vehicon or Seeker (on the premise that those are effectively OCs with backstory). I’ve also excluded TF/human relationships including reader self-insert for similar reasons. Non-OC TFs are defined as those findable on TFWiki.

Right, on with the actual findings:

1. There are at least 639 individual pairings in TF fandom as represented on AO3; of those, around 12% (at least 146) are one-fic wonders whose supporters I can only salute. The median number of fics per pairing is 7, which is surprisingly low. (I’d been thinking of my favourite Megatron/Jazz as “rare”, but it’s only just outside the top quartile in reality). At the other end of the scale, there are 55 pairings with over 100 fics and 4 with over 1000. All of this is not nearly so impressive as the combinatorics someone did in the great TF/Homestuck discussion, but I expect that is my own fault for excluding OCs, vehicons and the like. Also, if someone wants to repeat this trick for Homestuck I’ll gladly compare results, but I know my limits.

2. The most popular pairing (somewhat to my surprise) is Jazz/Prowl, with 2632 fics. Megatron/Optimus Prime (including Megatron/Orion Pax etc and correcting for overlaps) comes to 2407, Megatron/Starscream 1783, and Drift (Deadlock)/Ratchet 1386.

3. At a faction level, Autobots have more fun, even if corrected for the fact that the population of named Autobots is higher than the same for Decepticons: using lists of named G1 characters as a rough proxy for population likely to appear on AO3, Autobots get 2.4 relationships per capita and Decepticons 2.3. Which is not that different, but Autobots also get 126 fics per capita, as opposed to the Decepticons’ 104. Decepticon advocates (including me) point out here that how much sex you have is not necessarily related to how much fun you have in the process, but still. Neutrals are harder to do pop stats for, but on the face of it underrepresented, and the Variable category for people who canonically shift factions during the war or whose name is shared with other TFs from the opposite faction is definitely overrepresented. That last one is entirely a function of Drift (Deadlock).

4. Still at a faction level (and again correcting for population), inter-faction relationships are definitely more popular than intra-faction ones, with 0.35% of the theoretically possible inter-faction pairings actually appearing on AO3 and only 0.26% of the intra-faction ones. Must be the lure of the forbidden, or something. Also clearly a lot of untapped potential out there.

5. More on this to come when I’ve done the arithmetic properly, but at a glance the most obviously underrepresented group is beastformers.

6. At an individual level, I have a few awards to give out:

The Little Black Dress Award for the TF who goes with absolutely anything (credit to @cleverthylacine for the name) goes to Megatron, by some distance and on either of the obvious metrics; he has 53 pairings and 6484 fics (correcting for overlaps again). He can presumably store the trophy with the Best Wife one... Vying for second place, Optimus Prime and Starscream with 35 pairings each; Starscream has 4843 fics and Optimus 4736 so it’s Starscream by an Insecticon’s whisker. And also close for fourth and fifth, Prowl (29 pairings, 3583 fics) and Ratchet (25 pairings, 3439 fics). Slightly stunned that Rodimus isn’t in the top 5, but there it is.

The Serial Monogamy Award for the TF with the highest ratio of fics to pairings goes to Chromedome (676 fics across 2 pairings, with Rewind and Prowl). I’m pretty sure this surprises exactly nobody. Second is Breakdown, with 969 fics across 4 pairings - Knockout and Starscream are the big ones, but Motormaster and Drag Strip also feature. And third is Tailgate, with 735 fics across 4 pairings (Cyclonus, Whirl, Arcee, Glyph). Nobody else anywhere near, once you correct for the fact that Orion Pax is also Optimus Prime. Soundwave: a sufficiently superior husband to be paired up with 23 other TFs, which reduces the ratio somewhat.

The Lifetime Monogamy Award for the TF with the most fics given that they have only a single pairing goes jointly to Anode and Lug, who have 76 fics together and no pairings with anyone else on either side. Second is Chase, with 56 fics in Chase/Heatwave (not shared with Heatwave, who has quite a few other pairings; I hope that’s a properly negotiated deal). Third a three-way tie between Airazor/Tigatron (28 fics, no other pairings for either) and Devcon (28 fics with Smokescreen, who has quite a few other pairings).

The Jack Harkness Fragging with Added Space-Time Award goes to Megatron, Optimus Prime, Brainstorm and Tarn, all of whom feature as their own partners in more than one fic.

And that’s all I’ve got for the moment. Next steps: do ntuples for N>2, add mech/femme and frametype/group/combiner to the set so that I can cut by those, try to work out a quicker way of repeating the exercise for pairs including humans, and wait for tumblr to give me polls. Drop me a line if you’ve questions or suggestions for future analysis.

#maccadam #dubious statistics

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marta-bee · 5 months

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Some caveats: I'm nursing a headcold today, so taking off work and more than a bit confuzzled from decongestants. I also 100% recognize what I'm about to say probably wasn't what Neil and P-Terry had in mind. But what is the internet for if not sharing our theories and thoughts just because we can?

So with that rather large grain of salt in mind, I want to talk about Good Omens (obviously), and medieval philosophy (equally obviously from me), and specifically what might have driven Aziraphale's fall. I'm using that term with a bunch of caution flags in my mind, because I don't think it's wholly accurate for angels, but there's definitely something going on with Aziraphale's character because he's changing and growing. Theologically, angels are supposed to start out good and stay that way, so any change can only be a step away from that ideal.

That's the standard view in most medieval Christian philosophy. I don't actually agree and think the possibility of change is what makes life worthwhile. (How boring, to be perfect with nowhere to go!) But my point is if the Aziraphale we meet in Eden is different from the one who says "after you!" outside a bookshop in Soho, that's .... not management-approved angel behavior, to put it mildly. Whatever he's changing into.

(I should probably add a third caveat: I've still not seen the second season, so I'm thinking mainly in terms of Good Omens the book and the first series storyline, and what little of the second series I've gleaned from the Tumblr ecosystem.)

Here's the part that fascinates me. Crowley's fall is a very familiar story if you grew up around Protestant Christianity, even culturally. Humans first sinned when they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; when they lost their innocence and understood morality. And Crowley fell because he was just asking questions. That either means he's trying to understand things he should have just accepted, or he's questioning if they really should be that way, or both. In either case it's a very knowledge-based form of falling.

I don't get that vibe from Aziraphale. If anything, what drives him to change is he loves too extravagantly. I'm reminded of this bit from Augustine's On Christian Doctrine:

But living a just and holy life requires one to be capable of an objective and impartial evaluation of things: to love things, that is to say, in the right order, so that you do not love what is not to be loved, or fail to love what is to be loved, or have a greater love for what should be loved less, or an equal love for things that should be loved less or more, or a lesser or greater love for things that should be loved equally.

Put more simply, we're supposed to love things that are good, and love them in proportion to how good they are. Love God unconditionally and without restraint; love other things as a reflection of God, to the extent they reflect Him. It all reminds me of nothing so much of Othello's famous description of himself: "one that loved not wisely, but too well."

And if that's not Aziraphale to a tee. It's not just that (if I may be allowed my shipper's goggles), is head over heels in love with an actual demon. He also loves the niceties of the created world so durned much: sushi, and crepes, and music that's not The Sound of Music, and all the rest. He loves it so much he'll do nearly anything to protect it, to keep it in existence, even if it means toeing the line over what God Herself actually wants. And loving the created thing so much we value it even above God, which Aziraphale is getting very close to doing, in spirit even if he keeps finding clever ways to avoid actually crossing the line? That's one of the ways Augustine actually defines sin. From The City of God:

These are thy gifts; they are good, for thou in thy goodness has made them. Nothing in them is from us, save for sin when, neglectful of order, We fix our love on the creature, instead of on thee, the Creator.

There's something delightfully queer about all this, or at least something I suspect resonates with a lot of queer peoples' experience. It's not that Aziraphale loves a male-presenting character, or even a demon, but that he loves so carelessly, so extravagantly, he loves everything and not just the things he's been told he should love. And that's enough to stop the apocalypse. To catapult him firmly past your or my side to ours.

And if that's not a delicious and true-to-character way to start his fall, I don't know what is.

#theology #marta blathers #good omens #aziraphale #philosophy #really this should all be taken with a large grain of thought and i can't promise I'll hold to any of this tomorrow #still the thought is an intriguing one

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prettyfuckinhot · 10 months

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Step-by-Step guide to adding Xkit rewritten to mobile android

Small intro: if you're like me and really hate features in the tumblr app like tumblr live, tracking URLs, and ads, this may interest you. If there are things in xkit you desperately want on your phone, that you can't achieve with ublock, this is DEFINITELY for you. This guide also works for any extension you want on mobile. If you're a normal user and don't mind those things, the functionality and streamlining you lose by using the mobile website is probably not worth it, just stick to the app from google play. Alternatively, if you only want to get rid of ads and Tumblr live, look into the Firefox Tumblr web app. You can easily add ublock to base Firefox and have Tumblr with no ads and no live (use the element picker liberally). This guide is for people who aren't terribly tech-savvy, and should be approachable to anyone with basic computer knowledge, even if the steps are convoluted.

You need to have an updated version of android and you need to make a Firefox account before you can start this guide. A desktop computer with firefox may not be required, but is highly recommended.

Install f-droid here. This is an app that allows you to install free and open source apps. Your phone will probably try really hard not to let you do this, be patient, don't click away, and approve whatever needs to be approved. You shouldn't just trust a Tumblr post about installing unapproved app, so do your research, but f-droid is very reputable.

After that, on f-droid search and install Mull web browser (same safety caveat as before; do research). It should be a green and magenta fox. This is essentially a version of Firefox that will let us install unapproved extensions.

On Mull, log into your firefox account by clicking the three dots in the bottom left corner (this account should have been set up previously; see step 1). After this, in the settings screen, scroll down to the "about mull" section. Click on this, then tap on the big Mull logo until a message pops up that says you have activated developer or debug mode.

If this has worked, under the Add-ons setting, there should be a new setting for "Custom Add-on collection". At this point, I would recommend switching to a desktop computer for convenience. It might be doable on a phone, and if you have no desktop, try to accomplish this by switching all mobile webpages to desktop mode until this guide is complete.

Navigate to the webpage for xkit rewritten here. Scroll down untill you see "add to collection". Add xkit to a new collection with a name you choose. You will have to type this in later, so make it something easy like "phone".

Now, in the top right corner, hover over your user and select "view my collections". Click on the one you just made. You will see the name you just wrote and a number between "firefox user" and "Creator" on the left hand side. Save this number.

Back on the mull app, select custom add-on collection where we found it earlier. Put the firefox user number first, and the name of the collection second. You have now synced all the add-ons in the collection with your phone. Note: you can add whatever extensions you want to this collection and they will sync to your phone! Yay! But be aware none of the extensions you add this way were optimized for mobile and it can get really janky.

Now select add-ons and you should see xkit there. Click on it and turn on the features you want as usual. I would also recommend navigating to tumblr, selecting the three dots, and then selecting "add to homescreen" so you can use it more like an app.

You should mess with the mull settings to your liking and add whatever extensions you trust, ESPECIALLY UBLOCK! Check out the default add-ons. I keep the regular app installed, because this web version is not perfect for a lot of things. This is for patient people who hate corporate control more than they love convenience. If you experience any issues or have any questions please reach out, I'd love to talk more about this and how much this has improved my tumblr experience. Major shout out to @april, the author of xkit rewritten.

#actual blogging #xkit rewritten #xkit mobile

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maiverie · 11 months

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HI DO U HAVE ANY TIPS ON STARTING A TUMBLR BLOG? like how you format your links and everything i'm new and want to start a blog but don't know how 😭😭

hi anon!!! omg sure yes I dooo!!! when I started I didn't have anyone to help me so it was literally such a shitshow lmfao so I HOPE THIS HELPS!!

— (long post below)

disclaimer: this is all based on my experience and im sure there are other users with better tips than me so DONT TAKE MY WORD FOR GOSPEL BAHAHA

(also I'm going to assume you reached out to me because you want to start a kpop writing blog and not smth else, so all these tips are obv specific to writing blogs. I also don't know how experienced u are w Tumblr so I might say some obvious things,, sorry if you already know most of these things!!)

anyway tumblr is actually really intuitive and after about two days I honestly think you'll get it (probably even within a day tbh). here are some quick steps I feel like make sense in my mind:

find a url (if you're starting a kpop writing blog,, most people seem to include the name/a reference to their bias but in my case i kinda just went w my name and played around w it until I liked it 😭 you can also search for "url ideas" in tumblr if you're having trouble!!) keep in mind you can literally change it at any point in time so don't worry about choosing the -perfect- one

set up your blog! most of the time, people have a navigation post (the pinned post where everything is linked so readers can navigate ur blog easily), a masterlist (a post that shows everything you've ever written), a wip list (a post that lists all your works in progress, so fics you're currently writing and want to publish in the near future). additionally, people have a post about themselves (like an about me section with blog rules and stuff. this is my old old one). personally, i have a carrd right now (this is mine here) and you'll find other users have one or the other!

set up your navigation post: hyperlink honestly everyone's different (btw don't worry about taking these tips too seriously bc honestly u should do whatever you want on your blog — it's yours after all!!) but I think most people include their name, pronouns, age (sometimes), timezone (sometimes) and hyperlinks to their masterlist + wip list.

how to hyperlink im sure you've done it before for school, but it's really easy! here's a demonstration — this link will send you to my navi, and this link will send you to one of my fics! to do it, you just need to copy the link of whatever post you're trying to hyperlink (three dots in the top right of the post -> "copy link"), typesomething, double click onto the word you're trying to link it to, tap the 🔗 button, and copy the link into that! (in this example, it'd look like this: something.)

how to make ur navi neat/pretty personally, I used to just search for moodboards (on tumblr) and pick 3 photos that I really liked (obviously give credit to whoever made the moodboard!). what I have now is just something that I designed but you can have one or the other, it doesn't really matter! other tips I think I'd suggest is to keep it as simple as possible; you can embellish it later but make sure it's easy to read and people can see all the links! I really like searching for "symbols" on Tumblr, and then there are cute lil symbols u can add to your post :) or just use emojis! or dashes! this might be a little ahead, but I have a tutorial on gradient text if you really care, but maybe focus on the base first :D just as an example, my moot @.hazyyu has a really pretty navi!

apply the same principles to your masterlist + wip list + about me just search for symbols, add whatever images you think look pretty, search for "line breaks" on Tumblr and there are pictures of links you can use to divide stuff up! making a carrd is easy but time-consuming (just search on YouTube "carrd tutorial")

there are other caveats to a writing blog, but those were just the basics! here are some other things I thought I could mention:

a permanent taglist is a list of people you tag every single time you publish a story/update it (for the purpose of them being notified every time you post) — sometimes people will ask u to "add me to your permanent taglist!" which just means tag them every time you post a story. personally, I have a google form for anyone that wants to be on the permanent taglist, but I didn't do that initially — I used to just wait until people sent in an ask asking to be on it and then I'd have a separate post with everyone who did. for example, this was my old one! doesn't matter whichever approach you do ^^

people also organise their blog via the hashtags I do this too! it's so much easier that way :)) for example, every time I get an ask, I tag it with "#ask" (umm a lot of people are much more creative w their tags but personally icb lmaoo — here's an example of my friend who used a different tag and it's really pretty!). if you want help with organising your blog w tags, here's an explanation I wrote a while back!

if you want help promoting your work, you should consider joining a few networks! these are basically big big blogs that reblog all your work so more people can see ur stuff ^^ here are some of the ones I'm a part of: kflixnet, enhanet, k-labels!

you'll meet other users along the way and call them your moots; most of the time this just means you interact w them a lot via asks/dms. personally I'm not really active and I kinda find it hard to keep track of a lot of moots so I stick to myself and interact w anyone that comes my way!! but bae u can do whatever u want!! go find blogs of people that seem rlly cool and send an ask and just see where it goes; just don't badger people, be nice and I think you'll pick up on sm things naturally!!!

ur blog is gna look great!!! let me know when you finish setting it up!!! I hope this helps 😋💖

#ask #@ : anon ♡︎#vis à vis ꒰ advice ꒱ ✰#questions about

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starry-mist · 6 months

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Have I done a “here’s where I think this bullshit might be leading to this season plus also some alternate options that I hate” post yet?

Anyway, here’s where I think this bullshit might be leading to this season plus also some alternate options that I hate.

It took me three tries, as per usual, to remember how to spoiler cut on my phone. Tumblr, I hate you sometimes.

Okay. Sarah. Taking Ph.D classes in behavioural science in Halifax. This is either setting up a) Mayko actually leaving or b) Sarah pulling a Julia Ogden from Murdoch Mysteries with the multiple role changes. I prefer the latter. The former is because I’ve had trust issues since season 3. (Also if Sarah nopes out to Halifax I’m gonna headcanon that she’s run away to be with Karma, fight me.)

Charlie being distant with Sarah (and also everyone.) I hate this. However, the parallel between Sarah taking classes and Julia going back to school before promptly cheating on him has to weigh on his mind. I have written a bit of an angsty fic that touches on this. Not sure if I’m ready to edit and post.

I also think Charlie is intentionally being written as a little more “rough around the edges” and I’m not a fan. And I think they’re purposely separating him and Rex from the rest because iT’s ThE hUdSoN aNd ReX sHoW.

Jesse. Joe is clearly training him in some detective skills, despite his being at a desk. I need him away from that desk. I need Sarah out of the lab. I neeeeed them to keep continuity with s5.

Charah. There is a possibility they’re taking a break. There is a possibility they just don’t have as much time together right now. Also, the promo for episode 4 100% feels like shipper bait. But I’d be happy to be pleasantly surprised.

Random hints I’ve noticed being dropped: Jesse perhaps taking another job (episode 1.) Sarah considering a new house/eventually “officially” moving in with Charlie, or they buy a place together (episode 2.) Sarah considering leaving (episode 2.) Charlie on the outs with his family (episode 2.) Charlie finishing his motorcycle because…reasons? (episode 2.) I’m wondering if episode 4 he goes in to renew his insurance and then ends up in the hostage situation. Which is quite silly but also high stakes so, there’s potential. Some of these hints feel like they could be setting up this season being the last, and they may have planned the arcs for a satisfying finale. (Look, I’d love lots of seasons too, with the caveat that they bring back the familiar format, but Diesel won’t live forever.) I haven’t watched episode 3 so I don’t know if it dropped hints.

There’s a lot riding on this week’s episode, which I may end up watching and regretting. If it confirms a Charah breakup, I’ll be back after episode 16. If it elaborates on what their current status is, and what the deal is with Sarah taking classes, I’ll accept that. The thing is, this episode is supposed to be a one hour real time episode, so I’m not expecting it to answer a ton of character questions in that hour. Though as I write this, the thought has popped into my mind that if Sarah is taking classes in psychology she might play “hostage negotiator”. Could be cool. But given they’ve so far reduced her screen time, I won’t hold my breath.

Anyway. My thoughts so far, based only on two episodes.

Also, it amuses me to no end that any time the show accounts post literally anything, the majority of comments are “tell us what the hell is happening with Charah.” Give the fans what they want, production team. We’re literally begging you.

#hudson & rex #charah #charlie hudson x sarah truong #starry speculates #season 6

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caestusvulpes · 1 year

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part flexible summary:

alrighty! sorry for the mild wait on this post! I got a few people wanting some backstory beyond what I have in my carrd ( of which I'll link this post in there for any future readers out there ) and had max and river encourage me to make it.

this is a post that summarizes the plot, events, and mechanics of a long-running plot ( spanning since early 2017 ) of our JJBA roleplay server. It began on tumblr, has been on discord for years, and I thought it would make a good addition to bring over here again due to the plot elements actually making interacting with characters from different parts ten times easier, as seen with kay and nora's parts 7 & 8 muses ( if you're reading this you two hi hello ily ). I don't have to make like 10 different verses or variations of verses and good chance hikari'll reference tumblr-based events in the discord. Might share some funny snippits of the discord server here as well <33

That being said, let me lead you on this fucked up and bizarre journey that spans 6 years in the most succint way I can possibly put it.

First off, read this. This PDF was put together by Max, and actually summarizes most things in the chat along with a few side jokes. Duplicate muses are explained as timelines folding into a main 'anchor' timeline ( the one of the original Stand user Conner MacCrimmon written by Moody ), with distinct enough variations on one person becoming seperate entities, and those that don't variate much just fold into their 'main' incarnation with a few new memories and experiences. There are three 'over heaven' muses in chat as a sort of 'pantheon', being Aster ( a version of Star Platinum seperated from a Jotaro ), 'Johtaro' ( a version of Jotaro ), and Cohnner ( a version of Conner who's the driving force behind timelines getting folded in-- originally loathed and tolerated, now with people being chill with him )

This also has the symptom of characters from other universes getting mixed the fuck in, which gives us the excuse to play muses from other franchises that are adapted to the world of JJBA completely. Shadow the Hedgehog? Who's that? Don't you mean Foundation Agent Shadow who's totally human and for his neutral special wields a gun? A few other characters I'll be mentioning in threads are Hoshi ( Foundation Archivist ) and Astrid ( Sees Everything ), written by Sci who y'all know already because they're amazing, Ollie and the aformentioned Shadow, written by the same mun of Aster who I linked above, Conner and Moody's other awesome muses, Avdol, Risotto Nero, and a few delightful OCs from the mind of Jules, as well as characters written by Athena, Kris, Rijolt, Kheti, Rani, Chickie, Viala, and Sun! Way too many to list here the cast is Very Colorful. But if you hear Hikari talk about another character in an internal monologue or something, good chance she's thinking about her buddies at work.

Now you may be asking me: clover, how in the goddamn does time travel work into all this?

Well, you may have read that bit at the end of the slide presentation about 'appearing anywhere' if you think about a place hard enough for ease of travel. This fluidity in spacetime has some caveats. Let me explain.

When first starting out in 2017 and lining all of our characters up, Hikari was actually the eldest character among the starting group of 5 muses. Cut to now and while she's aged normally ( at 24 now! ), Kakyoin is in his 40s, Astrid is in her late 20s, and iirc Yukako slipped in time as well. But to answer this, we need to talk about parallel universes.

kidding. kind of.

sometimes cohnner's weaving gets a little wonky and threads of time slip from the tapestry. This causes characters to slip out of time until its weaved back in. For these characters, life continues somewhat normally-- the Foundation may still be there, although people like Hoshi and Hikari and Astrid aren't, and until the fold mends, they're stuck in that timeline, aging normally. The holding record for character with the longest dip in time is both Tenmei Kakyoin and Aster at a whopping 12 fucking years.

To the main timeline, they were only gone for about a day. There was no real way to get back until the stars just happened to align, and the man jumped from late twenties to his forties in the span of 28 hours.

Existentially terrifying, right?

Well, with timeline explanations out of the way, I'm obviously not going to godmod and Hikari assume or know your muses, nor know the history if she happens to be stuck in a part that's in the past ( bt as in her non-bt verse, phantom blood, sdc, or golden wind ). She doesn't read those files anyway, and if she did I probably would go with her not knowing jack and/or shit. In the server its a different story, but I'm not gonna give Hikari multiversal knowledge.

There's also some mechanically different stuff, such as fusion as mentioned in the slide. Here's a slide in a similar style I made like a year and a half ago. Fusion is canon as per both DIU ( Stray Cat and Killer Queen ) and Jojolion ( something something oranges and lemons something something wall eyes something something josuk8 ), so naturally we all built something off of it and this was born after a bunch of workshopping. I'm so normal about fusions i'm so so incredibly normal. Extra body parts applies and there's some tongue in cheek references to su and dragon ball, but inherently its its own thing. Yes there's a ton of fusions with Hikari as a component in the list section shut up.

Currently, Hikari might be investigating strange events that coincide with Stand phenomena. She uses her side gig as a groundskeeper to hover around Morioh and gather info by ear. In other situations, she might slip into parts 7 or 8 due to them being entirely different universes due to being naturally around spacetime irregularities. Y'know, funstuff.

As always, I want to stress that if you do not want to work with this canon, you're absolutely free to tell me. We can do something entirely seperate from this. This is mostly background shenanigans that explains some of Hikari's thoughts and actions, and won't really come into play unless its plotted out, and due to the ease of working Hikari into threads using this as a basis, that's why its my part flexible verse. These aren't hard rules!

Thank you for reading!! If you want more clarification on anything stated here, pleaaaaaase send me an ask-- box is always open <33

#ooc | and i won't be part of this in the end #every day i thank araki for making alternate universes / eoh / and fusion somewhat canon #bc we're gonna abuse the shit out of that here :eyes:

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zwoelffarben · 1 year

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A question actually addressed to me (i think based on context: @iwillgotoheavenforyou correct me if I'm wrong), so I guess I now have to take the time to answer it because "It's the autism," is entirely too pithy an accurate response to be useful.

How do you know so much

The first caveat to say is that I don't actually know all that much: I'm fond of saying, "I pretend to know things," and that's not really true because I do know things, but I generally give off the vibe that I know more stuff to a more indepth mastery than I actually do. This is cause of three four things.

I'm a knowledge generalist: I don't know a lot about most subjects but I pick up a little bit about everything.

I'm autistic and for me that manifests in being very good at connecting dots to draw beautifyl patterns, even given a small number of data points.

I'm autistic and I'm very particular about how I phrase things, with nuance and depth, such to avoid being misunderstood.

I was taught how to do basic research, and I try to make a habit of doing it before speaking when unsure about something.

I typically only know enough about something to be dangerous; often I need to look things up to remember exact details but I also try to make a habit checking my position on the dunning-kruger graph before speaking by looking shit up: You will however semi-regularly find me called out for having misjudged where exactly on that curve I am enrealis; and one whoopsie-daisy of a conversation with some actual expert later I'll admit that to being wrong on the internet out-loud for the world to read. It's never a pleasant experience but I assure you, I'm always so very brave about it. That's how I maintain the illusion of knowing so much™.

Now as for how I actually go about knowing things, well the things I know a lot about were either special interests of mine or things I specifically learned about in school and college. I went to the liberal arts school ███████ where I learned a shit tonne of information and then my autistic brain started connecting dots and forming opinions about things I have no business having opinions about. I have never filed my taxes (on account of not making enough to be legally required to file taxes) and yet, I have opinions about W2 forms which I won't be sharing here because they're not relevant.

My actual areas of expertise are quite limited in scope to 400 creative writing, 250s math, (english) literature, 200s chemistry, biology, physics, psychology, economics, art theory, painting, computers and coding, 100s of many miscellanious disciplines, blorbo from shows, shows, minecraft, and my lived experiences as an left-handed autistic queer white dude whose shoelaces deep into tumblr. This is a normal amount of things to know stuff about.

I know just about as much as anyone else who is my age and has had my level of education, but my autism might make me marginally better at connecting threads across multiple disciplines to apply knowledges in synasthetic ways, but mostly I'm practiced in the art of appearing to know what I'm talking about (not because I want to seem smart but because as a baby autistic being labelled 'smart' made surviving K-12 easier for me.)

How do you have time to write in such details

I'm fortunate enough that my living situation is stable such that I don't need to hold down a job nor make a living and can spend most of my time shitposting, seriousposting, and playing minedcraft.

I do type faster than most people because I'm a left-handed person both because I type a lot and because I'm using a DAVORK-L instead of QWERTY. I actually can type fast enough to cause minor-major sprains in my right wrist. I don't tend to do that, but it's happened and will continue to happen in the future.

But mostly, I just start a post and type until it's finished. I enter a fugue state and exit it hours later +1 reblog. (This matches my general approach to creative pursuits like writing and painting.)

How do you remember all of this

Most of the time I don't. There are two relevant modes of memory (there are a bunch of others) recall and recognition: I'm good at exactly one of those things; and well, my brain is not a well-ordered library of facts that I can look things up in.

It is a mireous bayou that swallows knowledge to rest beneath its murky waters; and if I'm looking for a specific factoid I need to navigate through the generally unmarked trees until I find a vaguely familar spot or happen upon the information randomly.

The thing you don't see is all the memory aids I have when posting about topics I'm less sure about. I have a folder on my computer called knowledge I put inforgraphics in. I have a folder in my browser book marks (sorely in need of organization) called use where I keep my citable links to stuff. When I need to know a specific fact and I can't find it in the bayou of my mind, I open 2-6 tabs on wikipedia to search for it, some of which I link in the post, and some of which I don't because I'm lazy or I actually did.

I don't remember all of it all of the time: I've recently started systematizing the tools and strategies I developed over the years to help me find my way back to specific information so that theyr better at helping me navigate the murky waters of my mindswamp, but most of the time anything I techincally know is completely forgotten about until it's needed again and dredged from the muck.

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sparxwrites · 2 years

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i'm slowly circling around hermitcraft (i keep telling myself i'm not going to get into another minecraft smp thing, i did my days in the yogscast mines) and it's so compelling. i won't lie. what would you, personally, suggest as a starting point for someone who hasn't watched any of these people before? even without knowing these characters, your hermitcraft fic is so good that i want to learn more about them

yeah see, i told myself that too and then dsmp and 3rd life and hermitcraft happened and. here i am. back in the pits again!! having the time of my life about it ngl.

so, okay, my first caveat would be: fandom does a lot of heavy lifting re: it having a plot. like... i'd say they're less plotty than the yogs were, with season 8 being an honourable exception. so don't go in expecting that my fic has uhhhhh. really any relation to canon lmao. (though to be fair, it didn't really in yogs either, so...)

first option: watch an episode of Hermitcraft Recap (a channel that does a weekly "what happened on hermitcraft this week" highlights video), see if any of the things mentioned take your fancy, and then check out the channel of the hermit that did it. this is good if you're hunting for someone doing a specific Thing in minecraft, rather than streamer personality.

second option: see the rec list below, and check out one of those people's season 8. season 8 is now over, but it was very short compared to regular seasons - so a lot of the excitement gets compressed and amped up, and it's a good way to really get an idea of what people are about. it will give you an unrealistic idea of how plotty hermitcraft gets, especially the end, because they went absolutely off the shits with that one, but it's a great season.

third option: see the rec list below, and jump straight into season 9 - either at the beginning of someone's series, or at the current point, or skip around through various people's things. we're like 20-ish eps in, depending on the person, but honestly it's pretty easy to dip in and out; we just had a big Plot Development with rendog getting crowned king of the server, so it's a good time to start! rec list (biased to the people i watch, obvs! the others are great too, but these are my faves), to help you decide who to pick:

Literally unhinged impossible redstone, constantly on his villain arc, (and tomato plants?): DocM77

Very good redstone, also extremely funny: TangoTek (also makes excellent noises), MumboJumbo (on break atm. i miss him :( ), Zedaph (he's doing. weird shit this season, but i support him in his quest to be a lunatic)

Incredible building, but also chaos-gremlin energy: BdoubleO100 (excellent noises pt.2), Grian (main character energy, tumblr's fave), PearlescentMoon (i am kissing her s9 base directly on the mouth)

Incredible building, really nice voice: GoodTimesWithScar (tumblr's other fave)

Building but also like. weirdly chill-but-horny vibes: Keralis (deliberately), Rendog (on accident)

Literally no idea but you should watch him: Joe Hills (very odd, currently hyperfixated on pinball machines, i find him very soothing for reasons that escape me, writes haikus for his episodes????)

fourth option: some of what you've seen from me will be from 3rd / last / double life, a bunch of semi-hardcore "death games" series run by grian and involving a bunch of hermits (plus some other friends, including inthelittlewood from the yogscast!). these are great, and i watched these before hermitcraft, and then based who i was watching in hc on what i'd seen there. double life is happening rn and we're only 3 eps in, so it'd be easy to catch up! it's basically a soulmate au but in minecraft, because grian is insane; i'm really enjoying BdoubleO100, PearlescentMoon, Tango, Rendog, and Grian (Scar is on a weird zookeeping arc, godbless, so he's in my bad books until he starts killing again. otherwise, the go-to rec is Grian or Scar's pov of 3rd Life, which sent me fucking insane.

#anonymous #ask #sparx chats #hermits crafting #life smp tag #v i b r a t e s #anon if u watch any u gotta come back and gimme the Reviews #:DDD

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