#anti orson scott card

[foulfirerebel]

So! Rant!

I've loved RWBY since I started watching during the volume 6 to volume 7 hiatus. Volume 7 was the first I watched live.

I'm still watching it on Crunchyroll. That's not stopping anytime soon. No, I don't support Rooster Teeth any more than I support Disney for having The Owl House, Amphibia, or Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur under their banner.

I stopped buying Ubisoft games after the sex assault scandals at the top came out. I never played League of Legends, and love Arcane as much as the next guy, but am not supporting Riot Games. I may have bought The Witcher 3: GOTY edition at one point, and had Cyberpunk 2077 brought for me as I gift but I haven't played Cyberpunk nor the Witcher 3 at any point recently and don't support CDPR.

I may have been a Harry Potter fan since I was a kid, but JKR's whole descent into bigotry of all flavors turned me off anything past book 7 where HP officially ended. I may have liked Ender's Game, but Orson Scott Card is blacklisted for me when I found out about his rampant homophobia.

As far as other things go, the only problematic thing(s) I have are a Spotify Premium subscription for my phone's music and a Crunchyroll subscription for anime since I have multiple devices I like to watch anime on and piracy wasn't working for me.

Assuming that everyone who may otherwise enjoy things like...I dunno, Assassin's Creed or Watch Dogs or The Owl House or RWBY or something else like that automatically supports the horrendous practices of the corporation that owns in it is not welcome here. Especially if you're like me and you either A) Pirate the thing, or B) Avoid it altogether.

Point being, I believe in Don't Like;Don't Watch. I believe in leaving people in peace to enjoy whatever they may, provided whatever it is doesn't cause real harm or contributes to harm. If you wanna pirate, go right ahead. If you wanna avoid things altogether, please feel free.

I will not judge you either way, as I've done both in the past and continue to do so with certain things. Harry Potter related stuff is on a blacklist, for instance, due to JKR's rampant bigotry and real world harm even if I still kept my books and movies. I can't watch Dave Chappelle's newer stuff either, for another example.

I can always get whatever I need of Watch Dogs or Assassin's Creed by watching a twitch stream or reading the wikis, or the cutscenes on youtube.

Anyhow: TLDR - Don't Like it? Don't engage with it. Pirate if you must, avoid if you must. Pick your battles wisely, as some folk don't respond well to being yelled at.

I'm gonna go read my Legend of Korra comics in peace. Thank you for attending this rant. Have a happy Pinkie Pie for your day.

#long rant #Hope I didn't forget anything #or step on any toes #that's not what this rant is for #and I apologize for seeming a little steamed here #I just hate seeing people get attacked for liking things #it did nothing for me when trying to let go of HP #And is not likely to earn you any support #Pick your battles wisely #and try to educate people before yelling at them #mlp #anti jkr #anti orson scott card #anti ubisoft #gif

[paddysnuffles]

If you hate on Harry Potter fans (many of whom are children, btw) regardless of whether they agree with Rowling's views

I wonder why you don't treat fans of the following franchises the same way:

Dilbert

Scott Adams is a misogynistic racist who describes Black people as a “hate group” and says women should be “treated like children and the mentally handicapped”.

Ender’s Game

Orson Scott Card is racist (among other things, he described Obama in his blog as being liked because Obama’s “a black man who talks like a white man”) and wildly homophobic (e.g. he said in 1990 that sodomy laws should stay in the books, in 2004 he said that homosexuals are self-loathing victims of child abuse, etc).

Twilight

Stephanie Meyer’s series glorifies an unhealthy relationship dynamic and exploits a real Indigenous tribe which has yet to receive any monetary compensation for her cartoonish use of their people to make money. (You can help the Quileute tribe move their homes out of the area that will be flooded by global warming here, btw).

Twilight is being turned into a tv series just like Harry Potter.

The Handmaid’s Tale 

Margaret Atwood shared a transphobic article.

#hypocrisy #harry potter #anti harry potter #dilbert #ender's game #the handmaid's tale #margaret atwood #orson scott card #twilight #stephanie meyer #i'm just saying #harry potter fandom #double standards #double standard much? #harassment #suicide baiting #death threats #think about it #purity culture

[etirabys]

meandering post about reading Orson Scott Card again

I've been offline starting at 9pm every day (except once. I was drunk at karaoke and asked for anons at 8:30pm) for six weeks, with the result that in befuddled boredom two nights ago I picked up Orson Scott Card's Songmaster from the house bookshelf.

I read Ender's Game and three sequels when I was a teen thought the books were mid. Since those are OSC's best works I assumed he had nothing more interesting to offer me and didn't try more of him for fifteen years, but Songmaster was compelling enough that I immediately afterwards picked up The Memory of Earth, the first book of a pentalogy.

TMoE is extremely my jam: after humanity blows itself up on Earth, AIs monitor thriving human civilizations in the planets that survivors managed to escape to, and suppress any tech that enables large scale violence by exerting low key mind control via satellites. But forty million years pass, many of the satellites break down, and the AI needs help from humans to restore capabilities. Because as its control wanes, people are starting to e.g. conceive of airplanes or bombs again, and override the injunctions against entering military alliances more than two edges of connection away.

The AI is worshipped as a god all over the planet, but the fourteen year old protagonist that becomes one of the AI's agents tells the AI from the beginning that he'll break with it if its morality seems wrong to him. I like the fourteen year old – unlike Ender or Songmaster's protagonist (adult minds piloting ten year old bodies), he's a normal gifted kid who's unpopular 50% due to his ego and big mouth and 50% because he's socially inept and offends people even when he's trying to be nice.

Songmaster is also partly about a permanent solution to large-scale violence, albeit through one guy who establishes a monopoly on violence and sweeps in pax galactica. Both it and TMoE are preoccupied with the eradication of suffering from evil / human violence, which is closer to my resonant frequency than narratives about defeating particular people or ideologies. At the moment I can't think of any other book with such an insistent focus on the matter than T.H. White's The Once and Future King. It's hard to make a compelling story out of, and I don't think Songmaster really succeeds, but TMoE's premise is well suited to explore that. (I'm also enjoying the matriarchal culture where everyone is expected to have multiple serial-monogamous marriages.) After reading 70% of TMoE last night I wrote:

Usually when I read fiction there's a small part of me going, how can I use this as fodder for my own growth, how can I remix or improve or react against this, how do the author and I measure against each other? (If the quality and content are at an anti-sweet spot, the small part becomes quite large and I feel all teeth towards the author.) But on occasion I read something so close that the absence of that measuring-feeling is its own sensation – ego departs, or at least is split across two bodies. There's just amity and recognition

And it's pretty interesting to feel this way about Card for, well, the reasons.

(If you're familiar with Card drama none of the following will be new to you; I'm coming to it fresh so the rest of this post is me going "uh... wow")

I vaguely knew he was a homophobic Mormon who'd gotten into fights about gay stuff, but I couldn't tell from the Ender books I read. But in Songmaster his issues spring off the page in such a weird way. Every fifth Goodreads review of this book is "Card, u gay?" because, well,

(One review, possibly from a fellow Mormon, that went "Card, it's so sinful of you to be this gay in your novel". Why did he write this book that would predictably make everyone mad...)

it's full of gay male desire. The protagonist (Ansset) is approximately a castrato and characters notice him sexually a lot. The first and only time Ansset has sex it's with a Kinsey 4-5 male character he loves, who's married to a woman but has fallen in love with Ansset. It turns out the drugs Ansset took to prolong his singing career painfully and only-kinda-figuratively explode your balls when you have your first orgasm and you'll never feel sexual desire again. (You'd think his loving teachers would have warned him of that, but, whatever, they didn't.) The other guy is literally castrated in punishment for inadvertently torturing a highly valuable castrato. It's pretty bald: GAY SEX IS ALMOST IRRESISTIBLY TEMPTING BUT YOU SHOULDN'T DO IT.

(Sidenote: both Ansset and the guy's wife are very close and have a "there's enough love to go around" attitude about the gay sex initially, before they go "wait Josif is a SERIAL MONOGAMIST... he can only love one person at a time... the moment he had the gay sex his marriage was destroyed". It's funny in a mildly stupid way that Card would set up this parable of homosexuality destroying lives and a marriage but almost everyone involved is peacefully ready to sail into an open marriage. I guess it makes sense if you want to say very clearly that THE GAY PART IS THE BAD PART)

which is fascinating to me, because... why would you tell on yourself like that

(81k also told me secondhand of an essay? interview? where Card openly says "we have to stand against legalizing gay marriage because everyone will get gay married and society will collapse", so that's informing my read of Songmaster as well)

I am pretty dang open about my personal life online but if I had a lot of feelings I thought were disgusting and immoral I would not write a novel dripping with those feelings before pointedly castrating the leads for them. Especially if it wasn't relevant to the actually highbrow themes of (checks notes) winning over your adversaries with kindness and never relinquishing your monopoly on violence. I would be so so so so embarrassed to let this go to print, it's so psychologically transparent, what was he thinking

(Well, I assume he's a very different person with different social incentives. For all I know, people in his church went "hey Orson we read your book and it's clear that you're gay but signaling strongly that you won't give into the gay feelings, we're here for you, it was really brave of you to publish this".)

#rambl #orson scott card #eti reads stuff #eti reads the homecoming saga #songmaster #content note: homophobia

[utilitycaster]

Re: Em Friedman, I personally always got the impression that they're just a big fan is Aabria cuz I think Aabria was one of their first guests(?) in their TTRPG class

And that's why to me all the coverage about Acofaf, WBN and now Burrows End reads with kind of a biased perspective

Like, I love WBN but as you said, it's not really doing anything innovative per se, and the whole coverage and hype about the Bear episode in Burrows End really made it anti-climactic when the episode aired

Idk, maybe I'm wrong, but a lot of the Actual Play coverage from Polygon (not just Em) seems kind of like D20 and WBN circlejerk while they're more than happy to throw CR under the bus

Oh interesting. Like, I do get that Actual Play is not a particularly massive community and I could see how someone who interviews players regularly might end up becoming close to them and generally that maintaining distance and journalistic integrity is uniquely difficult, but also like. Here's the thing. I know Critical Role is The 800 lb Gorilla in the actual play space; no one else is selling out Wembley Arena. I don't mind if they're not getting the same boosts from publications, because they don't really need it and people love an underdog and all that. It's still not great, that this bias exists, but Critical Role is much harder to keep up with because it is at this point 8 years of content to fully know what's going on in Campaign 3, whereas you could have someone binge watch ACOFAF in a long weekend.

What gets me is that it's not just fawning and biased. It's ignorant of the actual play genre and claiming things that are flat out untrue. "Critical Role isn't as good as Dimension 20" is an opinion. I don't agree with it but it's a valid position for someone to have, and even journalists are entitled to preferences. But like, again: TAZ Balance started at level 1, with the party obtaining a legendary and dangerous artifact at a low level, and it started in late 2014. NADDPod campaign 1 also started at level 1 and ran up to level 20, and it began in early 2018.

Longform D&D/Pathfinder are also not new. Both of the examples above ran over 60 episodes; NADDPod's first campaign was an even 100. Rusty Quill Gaming ran an impressive 218 over 8 years, though they tended to stick to about an hour long per episodes so it's closer to NADDPod in actual hours of gameplay. Obviously Critical Role, while unedited and not a podcast primarily, has had 100+ episode campaigns. All of these were also set in homebrew worlds, though TAZ was extremely loosely based on Forgotten Realms to start, and RQG was essentially a divergent history of our world. So what, precisely, other than the Children's Adventure, makes WBN different? Like...I know fandoms struggle to understand this but it does not do anyone a single fucking favor to act like well-executed but traditional formats (or solid but par for the course work) is radical and innovative genius! It doesn't make me say "wow, WBN is clearly groundbreaking." It makes me go "wow, Polygon's coverage is written by a fucking idiot who's unfamiliar with the landscape of actual play."

What gets me about the bear episode is that it was also, in my opinion, very well-executed and an interesting battle, but it was not like, any different from another battle map except that the production team did a really good job making it slightly gorier than the norm. That's it. And as for the twist...look, again, I'm reserving final judgment, but I keep thinking about this (regrettably it is from Orson Scott Card, who is both a homophobic asshole, and also wrote "How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy" which was my introduction to Octavia Butler and genuinely informs my understanding of the genre to this day):

"If you are using a known foreign language, by the way, take the time and effort to get it right. Among your readers there will always be someone who speaks that language like a native. If you get it wrong, those readers lose faith in you - and rightly so. Wherever you can be truthful, you should be truthful; if your readers can see that you're acting by that credo, they'll trust you, and you'll deserve their trust. But if they catch you faking it, and doing it so carelessly that you can easily be caught, they'll figure that if the story wasn't worth much effort to you, it shouldn't be worth much to them, either. They may still like the story, but you have blunted the edge of their passion."

This is both what I'm worried might end up being true re: Burrow's End (except instead of a foreign language I speak like a native, it's How Radiation Works) but it's also true in that like...all of those longform campaigns? I've watched or listened to them in full. Acting like it's innovation to...do a thing that's been done by so many other prominent actual plays is not even reading to me as bias. It's reading to me as a combination of wildly misplaced priorities (genuinely I think between this and the ask meme I'm like "hmmm have we considered that we're asking a huge amount from a niche medium and acting like it is the responsibility of a bunch of actors with dice to constantly reinvent the artform in which they work and dismantle the kyriarchy and prevent us from getting into arguments with our friends, instead of, as WBN's own page says, play games to make stories out of sound?") and also just. Ignorance. This is a person who is talking about something they genuinely don't know about. Why should I listen? I mean the bias doesn't help, but really it's the ignorance that kills it.

#answered #Anonymous #long post

[bellasbookclub]

the official™ Bella's Book Club ask game

by @bellasbookclub

send me an emoji and I'll tell you...

👯‍♀️ Little Women - What was your favorite book as a kid?

🗝️ Jane Eyre (book) - Do you like gothic lit? Why or why not? (If yes, what’s your favorite gothic story?)

💔 Wuthering Heights - What book do you re-read most often?

🔥 Fahrenheit 451 - What book would you set on fire if you could? (Or hurl out the window, if you’re anti-book-burning?)

🐦 To Kill a Mockingbird - What’s a book you had to read for school that you actually enjoyed?

🚣🏽‍♀️ Voyage of the Dawn Treader - What book from a larger series stands out to you?

🌬️ Gone With the Wind - What’s the longest book you’ve ever read?

🐉 Dragonriders of Pern - What’s your favorite series?

🦷 Tooth and Claw - What obscure book do you wish more people would read?

👰🏽 The Princess Bride - What’s your favorite book-to-film adaptation?

😭 Persuasion - What’s the saddest book or scene you’ve ever read?

💅 Emma - Drop your hottest, most scorching take on a book or character.

🔪 Agatha Christie - What’s your favorite Twist in all of literature? Spoil us!

🌲 LM Montgomery - What literary setting would you love to visit?

😂 Douglas Adams - What’s a book that made you laugh?

🤢 David Eddings/Orson Scott Card - What book do you wish you could separate from its shitty author?

🤠 Zane Grey - What’s your “trashy” guilty pleasure book?

🎭 Shakespeare - What book would you love to see adapted into another form, or adapt yourself?

🧚 Jane Eyre (character) - Which fictional character is 80% of your personality?

🍖 Scout Finch - Which fictional character is your complete opposite?

🖊️ Jo March - Which fictional character do you desperately wish you were?

🎀 Elinor Dashwood - Ask a friend or family member which fictional character you remind them of.

🦁 Lucy Pevensie - Who was your favorite book character as a kid?

#ask game #ask games #books #booklr #book asks #reading #bbc official ask game #twilight #the twilight saga #bella swan

[literaticat]

Jen, I have a question for you. If it isn’t your cup of tea, no worries. I just don’t know where to turn.

With the controversy surrounding JKR—I’ve gone to Youtube to understand from the Trans community why her comments hurt them. There are tons of problematic authors I will never buy books from (Orson Scott Card-homophobe) but that’s because I have gay friends.  I don’t know anyone personally trans, but I DO support the Trans community. Sooo—if I haven’t given up my HP books, if I want to play the Hogwarts video game—am I not being an ally to Trans people?

JKR is a virulent transphobe who ALSO is a bajillionaire who has the ear of people in power. Her rhetoric actually contributes to lawmakers, particularly in the UK but elsewhere as well, passing heinous bills that directly affect trans youth.

So like, choose your own adventure, I guess, but I personally won't contribute to her lining her pockets. In my opinion, giving her money is akin to donating to a far right anti-civil-rights organization.

I say this as somebody who has been a HUGE Harry Potter fan in my life. I owned all the books, I saw all the movies, I went to London to the HP set (twice!), I went to Harry Potter World or whatever at Universal in Orlando and LA, and *wept openly* the first time I entered Diagon Alley, I was on the faculty at the largest HP fan convention and watched the last movie in a midnight showing WITH CAST MEMBERS and everyone wore wizard gear and then went to a WIZARD ROCK CONCERT. So like -- I was all in.

But now? I don't know what to tell you. I still am interested in tiktoks that deconstruct the narratives and whatnot. I still like the actors. I don't begrudge anyone who still feels love for the books and characters. HOWEVER -- personally, the author's words and deeds make me so sick I can't bear it. I donated the amount of money I have spent on HP merch and books and whatnot in my life to the Trevor Project. I'm not interested in continuing to contribute money to her. And that includes playing the game, going to the theme parks, buying NEW books, or whatever else. It just gives me the massive ICK, and I couldn't if I wanted to, that's how strong the ICK is. (I didn't burn my old books or anything -- but I don't feel the urge to look at them, at all. So.)

You can grapple with what your conscious tells you in your own way -- this is just what I have to do. I appreciate what the franchise and fandom brought me in the past, and choose not to carry it forward into the future.

[glowing-disciple]

Reading List - 2024

Currently Reading:

Champions of the Rosary by Donald H. Calloway

The Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft

Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Books Read:

The Art of Computer Designing by Osamu Sato

The Complete Book of Kitchen Collecting by Barbera E. Mauzy

Dreaming the Biosphere by Rebecca Reider

Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel

Funny Number Tricks by Rose Wyler

Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe

Hammer of the Gods by Stephen Davis

Jaws by Peter Benchley

Jungian Archetypes: Jung, Gödel, and the History of Archetypes by Robin Robertson

Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis

Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices by Thomas Brooks

Reflections on Evolution by Fredrick Sproull

Roadie: My Life on the Road with Coldplay by Matt McGinn

Time for Bed, Sleepyheads by Normand Chartier

Future Reading:

A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter

Adventures in Cryptozoology Vol. 1 by Richard Freeman

All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

Always Running by Luis J. Rodriguez

Ancient Mysteries, Modern Visions by Philip S. Callahan

The Anti-Mary Exposed by Carrie Gress

The Arm of the Starfish by Madeleine L'Engle

The Art Nouveau Style by Stephan Tschudi Madsen

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

The Cairngorms by Patrick Baker

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Cubism by Guillaume Apollinaire

Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett

Evolution by Nowell Stebbing

Expressionism by Ashley Bassie

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods by Hal Johnson

Found in a Bookshop by Stephanie Butland

Frankenstein by Mary Shelly

Freckles by Gene Stratton-Porter

Fundamentals of Character Design by Various Authors

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miquel de Cervantes Saavedra

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

Humorous Ghost Stories by Various Authors

Illuminated Manuscripts by Tamara Woronowa

The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells

Joan Miro by Joan Miro

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Keeper of the Bees by Gene Stratton-Porter

Light of the Western Stars by Zane Grey

Living by the Sword by Eric Demski

The Longest Cocktail Party by Richard DiLello

Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis

Otis Spofford by Beverly Clearly

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

The Silmarillion by J R R Tolkien

Strange Love by Ann Aguirre

Sweet Sweet Revenge LTD by Jonas Jonasson

The River by Gary Paulsen

Things My Son Needs to Know About the World by Fredrik Backman

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

We Are Where the Nightmares Go and Other Stories by C. Robert Cargill

The Weiser Field Guide to Cryptozoology by Deena West Budd

The White Mountains by John Christopher

#reading list #to update as I go

[batboyblog]

I think too many people have decided that media consumption (or refusal to consume some media) is not only a form of activism, but the highest form of activism.

So to be clear you can read a book, watch a movie etc without agreeing with the actions or the view points of the characters even the main character. Watching John Wick doesn't mean you believe in guns as the answer to problems. Watching Dirty Harry doesn't mean you endorse police violence. We can go on and on here, but basically watching or reading a piece of media doesn't mean you agree with the characters and their actions and often times media is made intentionally complex to make a character questionable or indeed outright bad while we still are made to understand them.

You also can read or watch a work and not agree with the author's politics. HP Lovecraft was a horrible racist, antisemite, hated women etc, but he's long long dead, hell Walt Disney hated Jews, hated them, loathed them, that doesn't mean you're a Nazi if you watch Snow White.

Of course life is complex so there are a few areas where you should boycott buying someone's work. One is when the author is objectively a horrible human being and is still alive so you buying their work will support them. This would be like Woody Allen, R. Kelly, Bill Cosby, and Roman Polanski to name a few off the top of my head, they're horrible sex criminals, your support allows Allen, Cosby and Polanski to support their life styles sadly out of jail.

a second group is when authors (or I guess copyright holders) have political views you disagree with and have made it clear they will spend the money you give them on their politics. This is JK Rowling of course, but also Orson Scott Card, author of Ender's Game, who is a devote Mormon and has given a lot of his money to the Church but also to anti-gay movements like Prop8 back in 2008, it was on the board of a national anti-gay marriage org, any ways buy Ender's Game used is what I'm saying.

Most books are just books, they may have themes or ideas in there that are political or cultural and you may feel some way about those but mostly they're stories first. However a small number of books are political manifesto dressed up as work of fiction. Most famously, Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged which pretend to be novels but really are odes to Rand's political philosophy that greed, and selfishness are really good things and helping the poor is evil. If you want to know what the worst people in government are talking about and want to suffer through some of the worst writing imaginable, pirate it. Rand didn't believe the government should help people so you know no copyright for you.

Finally there are a very small, tiny handful of books you really just shouldn't read. I'm thinking here of like The Turner Diaries. Like Atlas Shrugged, The Turner Diaries are political manifesto pretending to be a novel. It's basically the Bible of neo-Nazis so unless you're an academic studying the modern white supremacy after WWII, you have no reason to ever read it (same with Mein Kampf, but I've limited myself to works of fiction)

#rambles #media #just read something that challenges you #please? #watch something with characters who are bad

[liamlawsonlesbian]

B! G! L! R! V!

from here

I’m v flattered that you’re interested in all these things bxbnxjxjmx I got verbose (shocker 🙄) so answers under the cut

B: What was the first fandom you read fic in? Which was the first you wrote fic for?

I definitely found buffy fic online as a teen! But I didn’t start reading fic consistently until 1D (I know), which is also the first fandom I wrote for (I know)

G: If you wrote a sequel to [insert fic], what would it be about?

hmmm since you didn’t give me a fic, I’ll say that I have considered writing a version of canine teeth in the side of my neck from Charles’s pov, since I have ideas for what’s going on in his weird little brain. also I would write the further kinky adventures of Charles & Max from no such friend

L: Which of your fanfics was the most emotionally challenging to write?

I’m gonna cheat and say a three-way tie between you don’t have to know that it’s haunted, i can feel the sun on you, and would have loved you (in a day or two) — each of those fics is deeply personal to me in a way that made me agonize over details more than I usually do

R: Which writers (fanfic or otherwise) do you consider the biggest influence on you and your writing?

generally: Jia Tolentino, Cheryl Strayed, Hanif Abdurraqib, Frank O’Hara, Edna St Vincent Millay

fiction influences, for good or ill: Marisa de los Santos, Robin McKinley, JK Rowling, Orson Scott Card, JRR Tolkien, Becky Chambers, Sally Watson, Joss Whedon, Virginia Woolf, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Georgette Heyer, Jane Austen

(Forever disclaimer that I don’t give JKR or OSC or Whedon my money and I don’t think you should either)

Fic: I would remiss not to mention gyzym, fic author of all time, or seefin, who orphaned their fics for moral anti-jkr reasons but whose fic Wild is the first fic I ever publicly bookmarked on ao3 and I think is a high point of transformational work. But I want to say that having @oscarpiastriwdc read my work, and reading theirs, has made me so much better at structure and dialogue, and helped me be much more disciplined in the way I write

V: Are there certain comments you’ve received on your stories that have stuck with you?

So many!!! Every comment means the world to me, and I always love comments that point out specific lines or mention reactions they had <33 if you’ve ever left me a long comment it’s screenshotted in my phone lollll

I will say that every commenter on “i can feel the sun on you” that said they wanted to go to Buenos Aires bc of the fic made me want to weep with joy, as did the Argentine commenters who said I captured the city 😭

also shout out to the one person who pointed out that I just removed Carlos from the grid and didn’t mention it in “canine teeth in the side of my neck,” you’re a real one hxjxjjxkkx

#thank you anon <33 #fic asks #ask games #I am so so sorry this is so long

[jimmythejiver]

To the last reblog I made that I won't derail further, but I've really held my tongue too long to not start fights on: The fact that my dashboard was full of 'if you don't burn or dump your old Harry Potter books and merch and stop making or consuming the fanworks yesterday, you're a transphobic asshole promoting her work and genocide.' Okay done. Trashed them and don't click the tags on AO3 or search it out anymore. You gonna stop consuming and making Scott Cawthon shit you anti-immigrant homophobes? Or you gonna willingly swallow the lie that he 'stepped away' when every evidence shows he hasn't and if you believe he won't still give his residuals as a creator to racist, homophobic candidates who yes are also transphobic mind you, then I've a bridge to sell you. It is mind boggling to me that fandumb thinks being a good person means 'don't consume transphobic content' but never apply the same to other bigotry except to harass small marginalized creators who didn't do representation correctly. Yet Scott Cawthon is exempt and can keep doing whatever the hell he wants forever because MatPat used statistics and graphs to say it wasn't anti-immigration, but 'safe borders' as if that isn't the same fucking thing with dogwhistling repubs. Fuck you MatPat and your money train. Even if the Fnaf fandom thinks you're cringe and think they're not like other Fnaf content creators and dissociated with you, you basically gave the go ahead that this was okay when all this shit initially came out and I've been sitting on my 'petty grievances' forever because I didn't want to be the troll bringing up old wounds that the fandom collectively decided was resolved, but it fucking isn't and I predict with the movie coming out with the creator's name all over it that we're going to have another J.K. Rowling debate for too many years on his intentions before it's too late, but hey that's just a theory, no? Surely this has never happened before with the likes of Orson Scott Card, right?

#want to make further clear that i don't hate all you twilight and fnaf fans who still enjoy your cringe and make shit or watch video essays #but it is telling you think your creators are exempted from the same boycotts you impose on rowling arbitrary because... #you decided terfs are the final boss of bigotry and not obviously bigoted candidates cawthon donates too #the shit rowling says is used by republicans to draft these transphobic laws but don't pretend cawthon's money doesn't talk too #that said i'll keep being the bigger man boycotting harry potter and grit my teeth while y'all have fun never growing out of your cringe #((said smugly because that's what y'all sound like every day you think you're superior you never got into hp or quit it at 12 years old))

[whump-in-the-closet]

Ahem… 4, 8 and 9? 👀👀👀👀

thanks for the ask! from this ask game

4. do you listen to music as you write?

An emphatic yes. I can rarely write without it. I’m so dependent on having music it’s kinda bad

8. are there any whumpy quotes that have stuck with you throughout the years?

A few, yeah. But i’ll settle with Orson Scott Card, because this quote has lived rent free in my head since i was 12:

“Sometimes I think you enjoy breaking these little geniuses.”

“There is an art to it, and I’m very, very good at it. But enjoy? Well, maybe. When they put the pieces back afterwords and it makes them better.”

9. what’s your controversial whump opinion?

uhmmm i think that a lot of villain whumpees aren’t actually villains, they’re antagonist whumpees or even anti-heroes. Morally grey in the most socially acceptable way possible. It’s like murder is an aesthetic. idk it’s almost like the Loki-effect. Hot misunderstood ‘villain’ suffering. Which is cool, but uh, i don’t think calling them a ‘villain’ is accurate

#answered asks #also. to clarify. this is an opinion i’m probably wrong on multiple levels about yhisb #this* #but it’s just my controversial opinion #which was asked of me #troy talks

[quackitytheduck]

📖, ☠️, 🌼, and 👾

📖 - fav book

ngl i haven't read a real paper book in at least a year but from what i can remember the ones that made the biggest impact on me have been the invention of hugo cabret by brian selznick, ender's game by orson scott card, and the chronicles of harris burdick organized by chris van allsburg

☠️ - something that angers you

THAT FUCKING VIDEO OF THAT DISCORD CONVO OF THE PERSON WHO TOOK 45 MINUTES TO COOK FUCKING INSTANT RAMEN THAT SHIT MAKES ME SO ANGRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! also people who are anti-mspec and bi/pan lesbians that shit makes me WRGORLGHHHH 🤢

🌼 - fav flower

roses!! but recently i've been getting into sunflowers for. reasons. listen iykyk

👾 - do you believe in aliens

absolutely i do!! the idea that there is exactly NO intelligent life in the incredible expanse of space, billions of years old, trillions of light years away is so vastly implausible it baffles me how anyone could think it's impossible

#asks #thank you cyrus mwah mwah ily

[jodjuya]

This is an idea that keeps surfacing every time I think about these books, but truely:

Dan Simmons' "The Hyperion Cantos" is to Coca Cola as Orson Scott Card's "Enderverse" is to those weird knock-off brands of cola you find in discount grocery stores.

You want galaxy-spanning conflict between the hegemony of mankind, an ascendant super-AI techno-god, The Catholic Church But In Space, some clones implanted with the memories of historical figures, the last guy still alive from planet Earth before humanity spread to the stars, and a messianic Redeemer; but WITHOUT Orson Scott Card's trademark ineptitude and bafflingly anti-visionary approach to science-fiction?

Come on down to The Hyperion Cantos!!!

Four book series (or rather a pair of diptychs, I guess?) that really packs a punch!

Sure, it doesn't have "Ender's Game" in it, but what it does have is The Shrike: a guy made entirely out of spikes, who abducts people and crucifimpales them upon his colossal metal tree that is—you guessed it—ALSO made entirely out of spikes, where they writhe in agony for eternity!

He's like every Judas Priest album distilled into a single being and nobody knows why he exists!

And he's not even the most interesting thing in these books!

#orson scott card #ender's saga #enderverse #Dan Simmons #The Hyperion Cantos #blogging

[mask131]

Fantasy authors I WILL NOT buy: Orson Scott Card

Or of the full title of this series: Fantasy authors I WILL NOT buy - I will maybe read them at my local library, because this is what libraries are for, allowing us to read books we don't want at home or authors we do not want to support, but I won't take any copy from a bookshop (unless it is one of those third-hand thrift bookshops)

I know that Orson Scott Card is one of these "great authors" that was heavily praised and talked about until very recently. He notably left a deep mark in science-fiction, but I heard about him due to the presence of his works among some of the "classics" of fantasy. Given he received numerous awards for it, keeps appearing in reference lists and everybody talks about his works, I'll probably take a look at it one day to understand what the fuss is about - and being a bad person doesn't prevent one from being a good writer, so maybe I will end up praising his books even though I dislike the man! But I will certainly never spend my money on his books, at least in any way that would be significant (aka - not from first-hand bookshops).

For one of two reasons.

He is an unapologetic and assumed, public homophobe. This is no secret and this is why Card has come under controversy these recent years. He is officially agains gay marriage and the legalization of gay unions, and he supports anti-gay couple laws. He refuses and condemns the criminalization of the homosexual acts and of homosexuality itself (thanks the gods!), but he considers that if a government streats treating homosexual couples the same way heterosexual couples are treated, "the heterosexual will rebel against the government and destroy it to preserve the sanctity of marriage". He doesn't support the systematic use of anti-homosexuality laws - but he does advise people to use it sparingly, but to send a "strong message" to homosexuals to make them understand they're somehow "violating" society. And of course, he puts in doubt the idea that homosexuality is something we are born with - he is one of these believers of "environment causes homosexuality - especially abuse". I think this is clear enough why I won't support the guy.

This is not as bad as the reason above, but the second reason explains why he is such a proud homophobe - he is a fervent, devout and proud Mormon. Even was a Mormon missionary in his younger years. And I do not like Mormons. For a long time I didn't have any interest or care for Mormons, and I thought of it basically as much as I think about any other little religion current like that... But then I discovered the whole "baptism of the dead " things. How Mormons literaly take over archives just so they can baptize people without they knowing, against their will, so that they would join the Mormon Church that they want it or not - how they go as far as to baptize dead people. There was a whole scandal at one point when they tried (did they succeed?) to baptize Anne Frank to make her a Mormon post-mortem. I will not back down from this: this is a vile practice, that gives so-called "religious" people the power to somehow ignore and erase a lifetime of personal choices and personal fights in the name of a "greater good" that clearlyexists only in their mind - it is an insidious form of religious tyrany and intolerance that literaly resurrects in its foulest form the "Christian savior" mindset that Catholics and protestants enforced onto the world for so many years, perverting their own rite of baptism by removing one of the key elements of humanity by their own definition, "free will". People fought for their religion, people died for their religion, people battled for their religion - and that you accept it or not, no matter what they picked, it is their religion. When they're dead, deciding the religion they chose or dedicated themselves to or sacrificed themselves for is not the one they should be remembered as a part of is not just dishonoring the dead - it is insulting them, pissing on their grave, showing in bright light how completely cut off from human decency and morals you are, or to be more precise how religiously fanatical you are. Anne Frank, come on!

I have to admit I do not know if Card personally supports the "baptism of the dead" thing, but given he has shown support for all parts of the Mormon practices and hasn't criticized it, I guess he also stands for this miserable practice - which is the main reason why I do not like Mormons as a religious organization.

#fantasy #fantasy authors #fantasy authors i will not buy #orson scott card #why i don't like mormons #mormons #homophobia #homophobes

[welcometomy20s]

March 4, 2023

Back in the Classical Era, Criticism was high art. The fact that Alexander Pope’s An Essay of Criticism is one of the most quoted works of that time showcases the importance of the medium. Of course Pope’s work came at a time of shift in art criticism, before criticism was done through biographies, as in the work were seen as a means to the person’s ideals, or interpretation of ancient works, religious or not. It was people like Winckelmann and Samuel Johnson, right around the time Capitalism started to take hold and the start of commodification, especially of art and its related cousins, who rode this wave and started to see art as a thing in itself. 

Sidenote: Shakespeare was one of the first popular artists whose work had been the subject of regular literary criticism, which I see as the bulk of Shakespeare’s legacy. This is the reason why I consider J.K. Rowling to be the Shakespeare of our Elizabethan time, since her work was one of the first subjects to be reinterpreted in the contemporary sense, fanworks and all that.

This idea was burned and fought throughout the Age of Enlightenment, culminating in modern art’s attitude of ‘art for art’s sake’, and the Death of The Author by Barthes. But with the proliferation of media accelerating in the last half-century culminating in media facilitated by artificial intelligence which might further explode its acceleration to the point of uselessness, we have seen a backlash to this conceptualization in recent years. 

Back when we only had three channels and a few hundred books published in a year, criticism was a guide to taste. What to take in and what not, critics wanted to influence the industry in which they were part of. It was a correcting term in the large calculus of the market, the goal being to wrestle the lumbering hand into alignment with what the critic felt humanity should head towards as they venture further into the technological unknown.

But in the times of abundance, choice has gone from a place of empowerment to a tool of oppression, as the sheer number of choices either overwhelms the customer or choice has been already made before consumption in the form of personalized content. The Critic lost their place as the arbiter of taste, as all taste was being catered to constantly.

A complaint about a certain art or work increasingly met with indifference and concealed hostility. If you don’t like such-and-such, why just go watch something else? It was clear that the corporation of the contemporary world was more than willing to accommodate for whatever taste the person had in mine. Every person can live in their own buffet of paradise.

There were basically two ways critics could respond to this. Either accommodate and facilitate this turn of events, where criticism moves away from prescriptivism to kind of a directed filter - if you like this then you might like this, this appeals to such-and-such people, and so on. Or the critic can fight back by going beyond the aesthetical claim and enter into a moral one, as in, they can’t argue that this is in bad taste, but that this art presents a danger to society.

Discourse became elevated into the moral sphere, therefore making the words more incisive and invective. And it was these second group that started to move away from the idea of Death of The Author entirely, and return in a radicalized form to the ancient way of criticism.

Call it Death of The Text. It does not matter whether the text itself can be lent to charitable interpretation, as long as the author’s views are repugnant, then the text is forever tainted, and not only is the text in bad taste, but it is a radioactive element that must be discarded.

I’ll give the example of Ender’s Game. I think people were almost surprised by Orson Scott Card as many read Ender’s Game as a call for acceptance and unity in diversity, a decidedly anti-conservative book, where the flaw of hierarchies are made clear. Now, people like Barthes would posit that if a bigot made a book that more people saw as a call against bigotry, the audience’s view should win out and that audience’s view should be celebrated.

But in a cruel twist against the wishes of the market, whose facilitation of currency is designed to forgo the societal-moral implication of the trade and let the object’s utility speak for itself, the adaptation of the book into the movie was met with harsh boycott from interested groups, due to the views of the author not of the supposed text or views of the most, if not all, involved in the production of the adaptation. The Author has retained its supremacy over the work.

The moral implication of these people are best exemplified by Peter Singer, whose ideas follow this typical sense-on-paper with bizarre-implication thought-process. It’s always a good idea to take the logic into their conclusions. If we were to be convinced of Peter Singer and the whole world heads out to Africa to help the starving children, then the calculus would suddenly shift and the starving children in Africa will not be the most suffering but rather the friends and family we have left behind, so immediately as we satisfy the need of starving Africans, we immediately must head back to help those who was forgotten by the initial calculation.

This cycle will continue with the world’s attention being bounced back and forth as the felicific calculus shifts constantly to account for new attention. Eventually, to make progress at all, one must appeal to this felicific calculus that they are of the higher priority and hence the world must be commanded to. Singer’s philosophy completely removes self-interest, but if there is no interest coming forth, whose interest are we going to appeal to?

The biggest problem with Singer and most Utilitarians is this belief that suffering can be objectively measured and therefore no self-interest is necessary to direct morality. But suffering is ultimately a personal and ineffectual concept. Suffering cannot be removed from its context. Any ‘objective’ analysis will be colored by their own prejudice and therefore the felicific calculus will be distorted by people who can best appeal their supposed suffering. What many people decry as Oppression Olympic is almost a direct consequence of Singer’s ideas.

Sidenote - Peter Singer is the subject of my favorite Korean academic faux-pas. Basically, there was a question about Peter Singer that was commonly missed, and when given to Peter Singer himself, Singer agreed upon the wrong answer. The board responded by basically evoking the author function, by stating Peter Singer in the prompt isn’t the Peter Singer the person, but the avatar of him as depicted by the board. One would wonder at this point why would a test on philosophy be even a thing when the test just seems to be literary analysis of one group of people, that is the board that is writing the question. In some sense, that is the biggest fault of all standard testing. The College Board believe themselves to be the head of some communist politburo, where their interpretation is the interpretation of the world, and therefore interpretation of their work directly correlates with success in the ‘real world’.

But back to art criticism. As you might guess, I don’t like this new development of criticism, an antithesis to the pervading school of text-only school of criticism, but perhaps there is a synthesis. I disparaged the Miku created Minecraft movement, but now I have kind of come around the sentiment a bit. Miku is an example of a paradox, which is that its corporate nature protects her from commodification, since the Crypton Future Media has put her in creative commons, which protect her from being sold but given broad allowance be reinterpreted otherwise. Miku is then a symbol of this new ideal, free from commodification, other than with the grace of her creators, but infinitely be reinterpreted and remixed.

Taking IP onto Miku then is an act of removing the author and in place sanctifying this new ideal where its commodification is well-measured but reinterpretation can be made free. It surgically cuts the problems of the art market and its influence on art itself.

#criticism #books #philosophy

[spikebumper86]

An Unbiased View of Minecraft

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Kong listened on port 20000 for sport client connections, this time funneling them through its load balancing service to distribute connections across our two servers. For instance, if some servers run on machines that can handle a heavier load of connections than others, then you possibly can configure the load balancer to distribute the load unevenly. You’ve received lessons and abilities and abilities and may even tame and experience animals. If you’ve used an SSH username and password, make certain they're safe and nonstandard. As a way to SSH into the occasion, it is best to create a new key pair. Attain out to the distant hosts with a view to configure. My authentic exposure to the time period was through Orson Scott Card’s novel “Ender’s Game“, where it referred to a strategy to distant pilot spacecraft across great distances instantaneously, with none time delay. Holidays are demanding, and you will feel tempted to simply accept each virtual invitation, however you also have to spend a while disconnecting from digital units. The service helps a number of sessions at once, so if you want to sport together with a good friend or a roommate, they can obtain the applying and play at the identical time as you with the same reductions in jitter and ping.

For this example, we will use a t2.medium occasion, as there are limitations on the sources that may be created with Cloud Playground. There are various benefits to cloud hosting, including guaranteed server sources, redundant knowledge storage and unlimited web site progress. However, it doesn't offer cloud hosting. Here's why: Using a Minecraft server internet hosting provider is actually like utilizing an internet host: You pay a month-to-month charge to make use of a vendor's servers, which might get you higher security, efficiency and freedom to use modpacks for distinctive multiplayer experiences. An unmanaged VPS internet hosting service means the hosting supplier is only accountable for the bodily server and ensuring it is available -- you'll must take care of upkeep, upgrades and software installation. Need realtor 's precisely the performance that we want. You are going to need a number of free space. Nevertheless, Creativerse has a paid Pro version that comes with, effectively, a lot of pros, such extra gadgets, and QoL benefits like increased stamina and stock slots. PixARK takes a variety of elements from Ark.

#Need Realtor #I'm Here #I love #Minecraft