Untitled @saber-pendragon - Tumblr Blog

if you’re white and wanna write a poc character and feel awkward about it i implore you to ignore any twitblr stuff treating it as a massive ethical burden and instead come in more with the same mindset you’d have if you wanted to write about idk firefighters but didn’t know anything about firefighters so you do... research. Like fuck off with the weird kinda creepy calls for spiritual introspection you’re not writing about god damn space aliens you’re writing about humans and if you think you need more perspective of different life experiences just read?

mala-taste

If I were writing about firefighters I'd also, in addition to just reading about them, take advantage of Our Blessed Internet to ask actual firefighters about how shit works. I'd do the same for a minority I'm not a part of.

I remember when there was this LiveJournal community where you could just ask about anything you needed for your novel - medicine, professions, vehicles, how things function in country X - and people who knew something about that would answer.

We need to bring this back.

mala-taste

And apparently just this summer they DID bring it back - it's called Little Details and it's on Dreamwidth!!!!

alexseanchai

crazy-pages

Remember, a world where everyone stays in their own boxes and only writes about their own narrow demographic is straight up a goal for racists. If you ever find yourself attempting anti-racism so hard you've looped back to "functionally the same thing racists want", stop, take stock, and ask yourself where things went wrong.

clowneryblog

Once saw a clown say clowns & furries speak the same "silent language" and that stuck with me for some reason

weaselle

i bet this has to do with something called Mask Work in theater, which focuses on how masks can make a person automatically emote physically in a whole different way.

The one fact about Mask Work that will tell you everything you need to know about why i say this is: people, for whatever reason, tend to behave the same ways in the same kinds of masks.

So for example, people putting on variations on this classic

all have a tendency to push their heads forward, raising their shoulders and curving their back, and to move their heads with a bit of a twisty movement, constantly looking to one side or the other with twitchy head movements when not laser focused on something. This happens the first time a person spends open-minded time in the mask, usually in front of a mirror, and it happens whether or not the person has ever seen someone else wearing the mask.

Many mask designs produce an effect that people sometimes describe as being possessed by the mask, as if the mask has a character all of it’s own that shines through no matter who is wearing it. Some masks make people have a tendency to flounce, other masks will encourage slithery movements.

And people tend to agree that the masks do not talk (that is, people trying to embody the masks do not feel like they can say words and be in the character of the mask) but that they do vocalize - so one mask may seem to make people make a sort of grumbly gibberish, and another will tend to encourage people to make sort of nasally “fnee ... fnee” noises.

Anyway, the clowns and furries silent language thing has to do with this i think.

Of course the sentence also serves as a quiet knowing look about the way both groups get similarly unwarranted, visceral reactions from much of the public -- a nice play on words from the clown there, who, after all, is an entertainer.

tsunflowers

everyone in the thread is saying “dude that was ice posing as a census worker!” which is fucked up and evil and I hate it. so as a former census worker, some tips for distinguishing ice from real census workers

while the census conducts surveys outside of the decennial census every ten years, they will always notify you first, usually by mail. a census worker will not arrive at your residence if you have not already ignored a message from the census bureau

census data is organized by household rather than by individual. a census worker will not be looking for a specific person by name, they will be looking for the resident of a specific address

universities are required to submit data to the census bureau regarding students living in campus dormitories. a census worker will not approach a student living in a dorm for an interview

penwiper

So a couple days ago, some folks braved my long-dormant social media accounts to make sure I’d seen this tweet:

And after getting over my initial (rather emotional) response, I wanted to reply properly, and explain just why that hit me so hard.

So back around twenty years ago, the internet cosplay and costuming scene was very different from today. The older generation of sci-fi convention costumers was made up of experienced, dedicated individuals who had been honing their craft for years. These were people who took masquerade competitions seriously, and earning your journeyman or master costuming badge was an important thing. They had a lot of knowledge, but – here’s the important bit – a lot of them didn’t share it. It’s not just that they weren’t internet-savvy enough to share it, or didn’t have the time to write up tutorials – no, literally if you asked how they did something or what material they used, they would refuse to tell you. Some of them came from professional backgrounds where this knowledge literally was a trade secret, others just wanted to decrease the chances of their rivals in competitions, but for whatever reason it was like getting a door slammed in your face. Now, that’s a generalization – there were definitely some lovely and kind and helpful old-school costumers – but they tended to advise more one-on-one, and the idea of just putting detailed knowledge out there for random strangers to use wasn’t much of a thing. And then what information did get out there was coming from people with the freedom and budget to do things like invest in all the tools and materials to create authentic leather hauberks, or build a vac-form setup to make stormtrooper armor, etc. NOT beginner friendly, is what I’m saying.

Then, around 2000 or so, two particular things happened: anime and manga began to be widely accessible in resulting in a boom in anime conventions and cosplay culture, and a new wave of costume-filled franchises (notably the Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings movies) hit the theatres. What those brought into the convention and costuming arena was a new wave of enthusiastic fans who wanted to make costumes, and though a lot of the anime fans were much younger, some of them, and a lot of the movie franchise fans, were in their 20s and 30s, young enough to use the internet to its (then) full potential, old enough to have autonomy and a little money, and above all, overwhelmingly female. I think that latter is particularly important because that meant they had a lifetime of dealing with gatekeepers under our belts, and we weren’t inclined to deal with yet another one. They looked at the old dragons carefully hoarding their knowledge, keeping out anyone who might be unworthy, or (even worse) competition, and they said NO. If secrets were going to be kept, they were going to figure things out for ourselves, and then they were going to share it with everyone. Those old-school costumers may have done us a favor in the long run, because not knowing those old secrets meant that we had to find new methods, and we were trying – and succeeding with – materials that “serious” costumers would never have considered. I was one of those costumers, but there were many more – I was more on the movie side of things, so JediElfQueen and PadawansGuide immediately spring to mind, but there were so many others, on YahooGroups and Livejournal and our own hand-coded webpages, analyzing and testing and experimenting and swapping ideas and sharing, sharing, sharing.

I’m not saying that to make it sound like we were the noble knights of cosplay, riding in heroically with tutorials for all. I’m saying that a group of people, individually and as a collective, made the conscious decision that sharing was a Good Things that would improve the community as a whole. That wasn’t necessarily an easy decision to make, either. I know I thought long and hard before I posted that tutorial; the reaction I had gotten when I wore that armor to a con told me that I had hit on something new, something that gave me an edge, and if I didn’t share that info I could probably hang on to that edge for a year, or two, or three. And I thought about it, and I was briefly tempted, but again, there were all of these others around me sharing what they knew, and I had seen for myself what I could do when I borrowed and adapted some of their ideas, and I felt the power of what could happen when a group of people came together and gave their creativity to the world.

And it changed the face of costuming. People who had been intimidated by the sci-fi competition circuit suddenly found the confidence to try it themselves, and brought in their own ideas and discoveries. And then the next wave of younger costumers took those ideas and ran, and built on them, and branched out off of them, and the wave after that had their own innovations, and suddenly here we are, with Youtube videos and Tumblr tutorials and Etsy patterns and step-by-step how-to books, and I am just so, so proud.

So yeah, seeing appreciation for a 17-year-old technique I figured out on my dining-room table (and bless it, doesn’t that page just scream “I learned how to code on Geocities!”), and having it embraced as a springboard for newer and better things warms this fandom-old’s heart. This is our legacy, and a legacy the current group of cosplayers is still creating, and it’s a good one.

(Oh, and for anyone wondering: yes, I’m over 40 now, and yes, I’m still making costumes. And that armor is still in great shape after 17 years in a hot attic!)

pellaeas

Hang on a minute. I recognize the name “penwiper”. Let me check– Ok, yeah, I’ve heard of this person.

OP also invented armsocks.

Y'all might have noticed that your friendly community moderator has been slacking a bit lately. No updates. No organizing. What the heck was

OP I have been thinking about YOUR IMPACT since 2011. Do you know what you did for Homestuck lmao

manasaysay

Another example of a foundational internet text that millions of people don’t know was so influential.

homunculus-argument

The fun thing about finnish is that formal written finnish is technically speaking a distinct dialect that's different from all spoken dialects, and while fiction is almost always written with written finnish, many authors will have the dialogue spelled out in spoken dialects to give the text more "real", naturally flowing flavour.

Someone speaking written finnish in casual day-to-day life usually means one of two things - either the speaker is somewhere on the autism spectrum (not a diagnostic criteria, but one of those "I've never seen a neurotypical person do that" things) or they speak finnish as a second language. And I don't know how to say this without sounding condescending, but I love hearing it, it's so charming. Like you stepped straight out of a 19th century play.

Standing in the line to a public bathroom, there's a man talking on the phone, speaking in finnish with a distinct accent, going "I understand, darling. Love. My love. Beloved, I understand. I understand. I will make my way there. Yes, I understand. I will make my way to you. Two hours."

And now that I wrote that out, I can see that there is no way to express in english just how delightfully formal and "writing a love letter with ink on paper to your beloved promising to come back from the war" it sounds when someone in finnish says "rakkaani, minä ymmärrän, minä tulen luoksesi."

beardedmrbean

theprofessional-amateur

This sketch is incredible. Perfect moment to capture. 10/10 for the artist.

Link to post

A hearing in Luigi Mangione’s state murder case in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was postponed until Wednesday after pr

paolo-streito-1264

Karunchai Treetrong. Hong Kong.

minotauri

ocean sounds for those of you who need it

snakepyre

thanks i made a little painting about it

victusinveritas

God, can you imagine someone from Finland (or wherever) heading to a Midwestern state fair and eating every variety of fried thing imaginable?

short-wooloo

This is the America I believe in, the America that we can be

danielkahndyke

the op linked the study in the replies & i’ve been skimming it & it’s actually rlly rlly interesting to think abt

https://e1.nmcdn.io/assets/pushkin/wp-content/uploads/imported-files/Wait-theres-torture-in-Zootopia_-Examining-the-prevalence-of-torture-in-popular-movies.pdf

danielkahndyke

like this sentence from the introduction alone is fucking crazy. “approximately half of adults in the united states think that torture can be acceptable in counterterrorism.” what!

trans-girl-nausicaa

we need a cultural revolution in america.

headspace-hotel

not to make this important post about my brain worms but this paper actually discusses captain america: the winter soldier at some length

in the appendix (which you can find by scrolling down) CA:TWS is listed as having one torture scene, which immediately made me wonder because there are two that I can think of.

further on in the appendix when the authors are discussing the criteria for including torture, they give the vault scene in CA:TWS as an example of a scene that isn't torture, with the justification that Bucky seems to comply with his captors, and given the information shown on screen we can't conclude whether or not Bucky is a willing participant in the "wipe." Willing participants cannot be tortured, therefore the vault scene is not counted as torture

That is a WILD take on that scene. "doesn't fight back" does not equal "not being tortured" come on now

now, I could see disqualifying the vault scene as being a torture scene on the basis that the purpose of the "wipe" is not to inflict pain, it just happens to be an extremely painful process.

That's an interesting take. Is doing something incredibly painful or distressing to a person torture when there is ostensibly a secondary purpose to the painful thing, even though it also clearly doubles as a way of inflicting suffering and asserting power? This is a really important question to answer, since a lot of instances of torture and mistreatment in prisons and military situations etc. seem to fall under this. e.g. a strip search is nominally for "security" purposes, but it is also forced nudity which is a common form of sexual violence inflicted as part of torture.

But disqualifying the scene because there is not enough evidence that Bucky is being coerced to do it is nuts, since immediately prior Bucky gets slapped in the face for not answering a question and doesn't retaliate, and immediately before that Bucky gets a bunch of guns pointed at him when he acts up

That's another important question. Does being forced to comply with or participate in your own torture disqualify it from being torture?

The answer is, to me, obviously no, and in fact this seems like a relatively common feature of torture: e.g. forcing prisoners to dig their own graves requires a good amount of compliance from the victim and that's a major reason why it's so distressing

anyways the vault scene was what got me thinking about torture in media and got me to rewatching jacob geller's fantastic video essay "analyzing every torture scene in call of duty" which actually cites this paper.

headspace-hotel

@dellerose peer reviewed tags

dellerose

[Image ID: tag that reads "#damn even the paper researching torture in media excuses torture in media we are so screwed"]

headspace-hotel

okay, for one thing, he doesn't "lean back," he is pushed by the scientists. also! the chair restrains him. but even apart from that, how do you watch that scene and get "active and willing participant." Pierce literally hits him when he doesn't answer a question quickly enough.

argumate

always fascinating by Latin mimicry typefaces like the Chop Suey / Wonton font to signify "oriental" for old-school Japanese/Chinese restaurants; there are a bunch of other examples:

faux Greek (angular letter forms, especially E)

faux Devangari/Sanskrit (add an overline)

faux Hebrew (blocky)

faux Cyrillic (backwards R)

faux runic (just write like runes)

a weird one is faux Arabic ("Arabian Nights" calligraphy) which is a little cursive and swirly but mostly suggests the Middle East by convention rather than appearance; then again the "samurai-style" Japanese faux font isn't so different in that regard I suppose *giant gong sound*

rendakuenthusiast

One important cultural asymmetry of the modern world is that this isn't something that cultures using other scripts can do to the Latin script, because every other written tradition in the world is still intimately familiar with the Latin alphabet; and often straight-up use elements of the Latin script along with their native written characters in their everyday modern script, as is the case in the east asian world.

argumate

I don't think that's true at all? there are plenty of examples of Latin mimicry in other scripts, like sans serif Thai fonts, or Japanese versions of posters for American movies etc. where the typographical cues are ported over directly, or blackletter-inspired fonts for Korean and Japanese, ideal for heavy metal groups, same principle of grabbing a foreign vibe and importing the aesthetic cues into the local script.

gothiccharmschool

Something something people not knowing the history something ...

abigailnussbaum

I am increasingly of the view that the besetting flaw of modern, internet-based, leftist-progressive culture is the tendency to take concepts that were intended as consciousness-raising, "have you noticed"/"makes you think" moments and treat them as all-encompassing rules for life. The Bechdel test is not a yardstick for feminism and/or artistic worthiness. It's not a test you were ever meant to apply to any single work. It's a thought experiment intended to illustrate how the entertainment industry as a whole discounts the interiority, desires, and relationships of women except as they relate to men. But again and again you'll see people - and perhaps especially people who define themselves as feminists - who treat it as the one and only meaningful measure of a work's value. In reality, there are feminist works that don't pass the Bechdel test, and works that pass the Bechdel test that are not feminist, and works with tremendous political value that do not foreground feminism because they're about something else.

And if the Bechdel test is a relatively old example, this is a phenomenon that keeps cropping up. "Some artifacts in museums were stolen or looted, with colonialism and racism providing a cover for acts that in other circumstances we'd easily recognize as criminal" has become "all museums are piles of loot and stealing from them is righteous even it it's to melt the artwork down and funnel the profits to organized crime." "Zoos sometimes abuse their animals and the goal should be to reintroduce specimens to the wild" has become "open all the cages and let the animals out (to spaces where they will almost certainly die/be killed to stop them killing people)". "Ethnic foods are sometimes treated as more palatable, and sold for more money, when they're marketed by white people" has become "people should only prepare and eat food from their own ethnicity". Again and again, it feels like these ideas that were meant to make us think, to pause a moment and notice the unspoken assumptions and elisions that exist in our world, have been turned into catchphrases that shut down thought. I think the reason that happens is that people enjoy the feeling of righteousness that comes from calling out institutions like museums or the film industry, but along the way you can become just as dogmatic and tunnel-visioned as the bodies you were calling out.

chocolatepot

Every time this post comes along I feel the need to remind people that yes, the actual novel Frankenstein does pass the Bechdel test. There are multiple female characters in the novel that the adaptation entirely leaves out.

I'm not saying this to tear down the adaptation, or the broader point that the above post is making, but I do think there's a secondary point to take away about how willing we often are to see people talking about gender/race/sexuality-based issues in fiction as ignorant. Even when we basically agree with the notion that sometimes fiction contains offensive stereotypes or tropes! It's still so tempting to let a rando's incorrect "that's factually wrong" win out because we buy into that narrative. "Newsflash. dipshit" sounds great, but witchofbonnechere isn't a dipshit, at least about this.

chocolatepot

The replies are full of idiots like this, btw, which is why you have GOT to be careful and nuanced when discussing problems with the Bechdel test and fiction that doesn't meet it.

The bar is so low for people that if two female characters speak to each other ONCE about something other than a man, that makes the entire story a feminist tract.

marzipanandminutiae

also for the record, it does pass the Bechdel test

Alma and Annamaria talk about the firewood the Creature gathered for them. or at least, they interact about it. Alma's name is only said briefly onscreen, but she IS a named female character who talks to another named female character about something other than a man

however, it doesn't pass the spirit of the test in its original context, namely: can you pretend these characters are lesbians? you cannot. they're mother and daughter. and the interaction in question is like five seconds long, and I think Annamaria says a few words at most, and it's background action to something else

and it's still a movie where there are only two MAJOR female characters, they never interact, and they both die before the end (to be fair, the dying is true to the book as well, although it's more like four main female characters and three of them die before the end. I do not actually like the book, but that's another conversation)

I feel like this highlights both the shortcomings of taking the Bechdel test literally and the importance of remembering its original purpose as well rather than Rules Lawyering it

(also to be clear I ADORE 2025 Frankenstein. I'm writing fanfic for it and I do broadly consider del toro to be a pretty decent filmmaker re: feminism. I'm just also aware of its...not shortcomings, I would say, because Elizabeth's and Claire's isolation in a world of men has a Point. but more what it does have, representation-wise, and what it doesn't)

danielkahndyke

the op linked the study in the replies & i’ve been skimming it & it’s actually rlly rlly interesting to think abt

https://e1.nmcdn.io/assets/pushkin/wp-content/uploads/imported-files/Wait-theres-torture-in-Zootopia_-Examining-the-prevalence-of-torture-in-popular-movies.pdf

danielkahndyke

like this sentence from the introduction alone is fucking crazy. “approximately half of adults in the united states think that torture can be acceptable in counterterrorism.” what!

zsh-official

shaxgirlsummer

a thought i've been brewing: the thing about measure for measure is scholars (rightfully) focus on how angelo attempts to coerce isabella into becoming a victim of sexual violence but they almost never acknowledge how angelo himself becomes a victim of rape through the bed trick (in which mariana fulfills the role of rapist and the duke and isabella act as enablers). just because angelo is a disgusting example of humanity doesn't make him any less a victim of nonconsensual sex. (and why do we need to recognize this, besides the obvious fact that we shouldn't close our eyes and ignore an act of sexual violence just because we don't like the victim? because there is no justice here. if angelo, the second-most politically powerful character in the world of measure for measure can be victimized in this way, then there are absolutely no structures in place to protect the sociopolitically marginalized. and we see the consequences of this instability in the final act when mariana and isabella are politically entrapped into sexually vulnerable, even abusive, marriages.)