#literacy comprehension is a thing missing in fandom

[nerd4music]

I think overall there’s one of two „big“ problems happening for people who have a problem with TOWL (racists and the likes aside… 🙄).

1- The misunderstanding that this was truly much more a Rick and Michonne story than a TWD one. This was not TWD S12. It was about telling the story of these 2 characters and being able to put a dot at the end (or a dot dot dot). And you’ve laid all of that out perfectly. Like yes, in TWD, Beale (& the CRM) would have been draaaaagged out. But this was much more of a Terminus approach than a Saviors one if we will…

2- TWD was never the most ..subtle show. They tended to hit the audience over the head with stuff. And I’m not sure I would go as far as calling TOWL subtle outright either (idk, didn’t think about this until right this moment lol -obviously elements of it are, sure -just as elements on TWD could be on the subtler side) but compared to TWD, it certainly is lol. And there has been a very big „media literacy“ and „basic comprehension skills“ problem happening for a minute now. And I really don’t say this to be mean or make fun of people or anything but these are just facts. Some people really struggle with getting the information when they are not being hit over the head with it, over and over and over again. After the finale I saw several posts on my tl of people wondering why this, that or the other was not addressed or how/why this, that or the other did happen… and I was utterly confused because those things they claimed were missing were very much shown? I was like, there was literally a scene dealing with all of this? And it didn’t require any reading between the lines to be honest, no subtext, it was very much the text of the scene?! So it seems like some people just didn’t get a lot of things that were happening 🫤

(BTW I don’t mean that even if someone didn’t have these specific problems with the show, they MUST love it then. Likes and dislikes etc etc. As much as I really loved the show as a whole, if I decided to put down the Richonne-colored glasses I wanted to and did watch to the show with.. I’d definitely have a few complaints lol, though still very much enjoyed the show even then)

That's definitely what happened. And to some extent, I get why, considering Rick and Michonne are 2/3 of the main show's Big Three. But when the press and promos started, and people were still talking about some Marvel-style meet-up, I was like...oh they're definitely not listening to what's being said, because it's six damn episodes, and also The Richonne story, not the Team Family jamboree. And then acting as if it's somehow 'insulting' to the rest of the characters if Rick and Michonne didn't talk about them. The man had PTSD so bad, he couldn't remember his own son's face. Why would you think it would be good time for him to pause in the middle of his wife telling him about a traumatic moment during her pregnancy to ask about anyone else? Please be fr.

I feel you on the comprehension thing, which is nothing new for this fandom. The fact that so many people legit thought Rick didn't know how to drive stick and questioned the 'realism' of it but never stopped to think that it was because he only has one damn hand. Y'all were fine with every silly ass moment that happened in the main show, that was either sheer dumb luck or handwaved away, but now we need a complete breakdown from experts on how Rick managed to fight off walkers one-handed. Now y'all want the realism, when you've been so giddy for weeks because you need one of them to die for the show to be 'interesting'.

I'm really not listening to people who need the narrative to hold their hand through everything, or need to see every piece of the plot onscreen for it to be considered 'legitimate'. (I'm officially banning the phrase 'plot armor' for the foreseeable future).

People didn't get things, because they don't take a minute to sit with the damn material anymore. From live reactions videos to live tweeting/blogging, people are just watching TV to make content and have an online moment, not for what's actually being shown. And yeah, TOWL isn't perfect, but the minor criticisms I have for it doesn't take away from the fact that it is very enjoyable and easily the best material from the TWD landscape in a long time.

(sidenote: I will say one of my favorite things from these past six weeks is everyone struggling to figure out the overall TWD timeline, lmao.)

#.answered #towl spoilers #twd: the ones who live #richonne #I am once again rambling #but I appreciate the message!

[apples-of-apples]

Out of the blue I know

But tumblr literacy drama is so entrancing to me.

I just see someone make a little vent post or have a small complaint about something, and it somehow gets spun into tens of thousands of people suddenly debating with each other over who is right or going to the opposite side of what op said or even trying to make it about fandom drama.

And it’s just so interesting because people so often in those posts or debates or whatever just seem to think they know the most?

I’ve seen reblogs that try to be patronizing to random people, hell I’ve seen someone try and tell someone that they are so close to anarchism and they just barely missed it?? When the person they are referring to is a fully grown adult???

And that’s the part I like to dissect! Why random tumblr user just don’t understand things. And yeah we can be funny like “lmao!!!!! This person has no reading comprehension!!!!!” But genuinely i think some people on here are so deluded in their thinking that they think they are just correct all the time!

It just so weird and interesting to see things like it y’a know?

#i know coldest take of the century #but I was just thinking about it for a while

[ladylynse]

List!list!

(relating to this post)

*cracks knuckles* Okay. Context first, then reasoning. 

Anyone who’s looked at my profile on FFnet can tell I’ve been writing fic for about ten years, which will right away tell you I am well past the high school stage, because even if I started writing fanfic at twelve, I’d be in my early twenties. Considering I’ve seen some posts going around the DP fandom celebrating the newer, younger members of that phandom (and welcome to them all!), I can safely say that I have about ten years on most of them. In those ten years’ worth of extra educational time, I have gotten my own masters degree. I have multiple friends with masters degrees–or multiple masters degrees or a PhD or even a post-doc–and I just met with one of them the other day who was telling me about her new job in admin, where she’s actively recruiting international students for graduate programs. Admittedly, I know more people with an M.Sc. than an M.A. because I have an M.Sc., but some basics are applied across programs.

Bearing all that in mind,

1) You don’t start a masters degree in the middle of a term. Maybe a few weeks in if you’re moving from a different country (I shared an office with someone from Ghana who missed about three weeks at the start of term; this actually gave my former office mate from India a bit more time to move out and me and my other office mate from Taiwan more time to rearrange stuff before our new office mate moved in), but not two months and then thrown into it. As with undergrad, you still have to pay tuition, and you may have to take classes, depending on the type of degree you’re doing, when the classes you need are offered, and how far along you are in your particular program. This is the middle of the winter term. The next term in the spring term. That’s May (or, at best, April).

2) Their English comprehension isn’t good enough to be anything more than conditionally accepted right now. I’m not just talking their spelling or their sentence structure; I’m talking about how well they understand what they’re reading. I asked them a question; they came back with a completely unrelated answer that we’ll call A. I clarified that I wasn’t asking about A or even B, I was asking about C. They told me about B. Even if they’re an ESL student–and while their country is set to the US on FFnet, they might be–ESL students need to prove their English literacy in order to study at an English-speaking university. I know people (from different countries) who had to do English classes or pass a TOEFL test before they were officially accepted into their program. I also know people (again, from different countries and with different native tongues) who spent less than one year in Canada and had better English comprehension than this person does, and I know native English speakers who had to convince their potential supervisors that they could write well enough to be accepted into their programs in the first place. (I also knew exchange students in high school with better English comprehension than this person.) This person has two fanfics in English, dating back to 2013 and 2014, and no mention of any other languages in their profile. Even if they are ESL, they have been exposed to English for long enough that, given that they claim to be pursuing a masters, I would expect them to have a higher level of comprehension.

3) “Film University”? No. Just no. Maybe a good program for that at the school, maybe what it’s known for, but there is much more to the industry than just film, and masters programs are more specific than ‘film’. It would be more believable if they claimed they were getting an M.A. in film production. 

4) If this were true, they would not have sent me a message in the first place asking for ‘help’, asking about my writing skills despite claiming to read some of my fics, or telling me to watch various tv shows, because they would know that they had a time commitment coming up that would keep them busy enough that they couldn’t/wouldn’t commit any time to their little pet project anyway. Things don’t happen out of the blue. I mean, machines might break down out of the blue, but you know of conference dates well in advance because if you’re applying to present, you have to submit an abstract long before. If you’re in classes, you still have a syllabus and know what the major projects are. If you’re working in a lab, you might need to book a time to use a busy machine–and you would not get the good times, because you’re a student and less important than the actual research going on around you, and if you miss the time you booked, or if the machine breaks down, then you will have to wait again–because even if you were next on the list when said machine broke, the people doing more important research than whatever your project is need to do more of theirs first so they can get all their research done by their deadlines.5) I know for a fact they were asking someone else for ‘help’ yesterday. Said new victim messaged me to confirm their suspicion that it was the same person. If their claim of not having time were true, they would have no reason to ask someone else to help them.

6) They lied about not having time. It is extremely likely that they are lying about this as well in an attempt to impress me–ooh, masters degree–and are banking on the fact that I do not have any knowledge of the application or acceptance processes into graduate programs or, apparently, the general timelines relative to the rest of the university schedule. (I feel like they went this extra step because while a lot of writers will cut back or stop writing when they get to undergrad to focus on their classes, it wouldn’t be a sudden, middle-of-the-term thing like they’re trying to claim.) 

#fanfic writer problems #ladylynse #asks #Anonymous #rant #vent