SIGN UTERUS @semionautaextraterrestre - Tumblr Blog

Neil Gaiman, “The Sandman”

I used to work for a trade book reviewer where I got payed to review people's books, and one of the rules of that review company is one that I think is just super useful to media analysis as a whole, and that is, we were told never to critique media for what it didn't do but only for what it did.

So, for instance, I couldn't say "this book didn't give its characters strong agency or goals". I instead had to say, "the characters in this book acted in ways that often felt misaligned with their characterization as if they were being pulled by the plot."

I think this is really important because a lot of "critiques" people give, if subverted to address what the book does instead of what it doesn't do, actually read pretty nonsensical. For instance, "none of the characters were unique" becomes "all of the characters read like other characters that exist in other media", which like... okay? That's not really a critique. It's just how fiction works. Or "none of the characters were likeable" becomes "all of the characters, at some point or another, did things that I found disagreeable or annoying" which is literally how every book works?

It also keeps you from holding a book to a standard it never sought to meet. "The world building in this book simply wasn't complex enough" becomes "The world building in this book was very simple", which, yes, good, that can actually be a good thing. Many books aspire to this. It's not actually a negative critique. Or "The stakes weren't very high and the climax didn't really offer any major plot twists or turns" becomes "The stakes were low and and the ending was quite predictable", which, if this is a cute romcom is exactly what I'm looking for.

Not to mention, I think this really helps to deconstruct a lot of the biases we carry into fiction. Characters not having strong agency isn't inherently bad. Characters who react to their surroundings can make a good story, so saying "the characters didn't have enough agency" is kind of weak, but when you flip it to say "the characters acted misaligned from their characterization" we can now see that the *real* problem here isn't that they lacked agency but that this lack of agency is inconsistent with the type of character that they are. a character this strong-willed *should* have more agency even if a weak-willed character might not.

So it's just a really simple way of framing the way I critique books that I think has really helped to show the difference between "this book is bad" and "this book didn't meet my personal preferences", but also, as someone talking about books, I think it helps give other people a clearer idea of what the book actually looks like so they can decide for themselves if it's worth their time.

nicostiel

#sobbing over perrito comforting puss through a panic attack

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022)

luulapants

Y’all are making me so concerned. Please let me explain to you how easy it is to just make shit up and post it on tumblr and why you should not be using this godforsaken website (or Twitter or TikTok or Facebook or WhatsApp) as a primary source for LITERALLY anything.

1. Go to a news site that has the vibes/credibility/subject matter you want to bullshit about. I’m going to NPR’s science section.

2. Find an article with an image that works for the flavor of bullshit you’re looking up. I’m picking this first story about an asteroid that is almost certainly not going to hit us.

3. Use the ‘inspect element’ feature of your browser to open up the html for the page.

4. Use the ‘select’ tool to select the text you want to change.

5. This will bring you to the section of the html that contains the text, usually behind a three-dots icon. Click that to see the text you want to change.

6. Change the text to bullshit

7. Do the same with any other text you want to change, screenshot the whole thing, then copy it into a tumblr post:

This process literally takes two minutes, tops. Do NOT believe screenshots you see posted on social media sites. Actually go to the websites of reputable news organizations if you want to stay apprised of current events. Use social media for recreation and socialization ONLY.