me externally: lit teachers arent pulling text analysis out of their asses
me internally: the reason people and especially students like to blame English for seemingly making up meanings where they cant see it is because literature is an art and art is widely regarded as ‘easy’, ‘anyone can do that’, ‘its stupid and useless’ unlike math and science which are widely regarded as difficult but important subjects so while students will readily admit that they have trouble with math or science they’re more likely to shift the blame when they dont understand a more artistic subject, seeing it as a sign of weakness that they dont get something thats supposed to be dumb and easy rather than seeing it as an important topic that’s just as crucial to their knowledge as any stem subject and just as difficult and in-depth as any math or science can be
also me internally: we’re so used to there being a ‘right’ answer to questions that art, including literature, makes us uncomfortable because the audience’s different and sometimes contradictory interpretations (even ones pulled out of your ass) are just as valid as the artist’s and there’s no authoritative, definitive reading for anything and we’re not used to having that power or acknowledging it in others
So many people misunderstand the most basic principle of lit classes. It’s not about telling the teacher what they want to here, it’s about saying what you think and why you started thinking that way. It’s about recognizing patterns from other works in the one your analyzing and using those to justify your opinion.
I feel like teachers tell students: “there’s no single right answer” and they hear: “this is all made up bullshit” but it’s absolutely not; you have to carefully document every bit of evidence you have to back up your claim. And people do it all the time with TV shows and whatever. I do remember that in middle and high school teachers would say “this represents this” without telling us how they know that and that’s something I would change from my own education that I don’t want to assume is universal. But I think the perception that it’s just “making stuff up” is what makes people think it’s dumb and easy. As one of my favorite professors ever always said, liberal arts is way more complicated than math or science for the exact reason that there are no definite answers and it’s so much more complicated. And you have to trust your instincts somewhat and have some confidence that your opinion is as good as anyone else’s, and that’s hard for a lot of people.
As a scientist and writer, I think of English essays like lab reports. If yourun the same experiment under different conditions, you can get different results, obviously; when different people interact with art, they’re essentially running the same experiment (viewing/reading the artwork) under different conditions (different brains). There’s ‘no right answer’ because results vary. Contrary to popular belief, there’s no right answer to an experiment either – the ‘right answer’ is whatever happened. Under different conditions, that’s going to be a different thing.
When you’re writing an English report, you’re explaining your understanding of why that thing happened. Scientists will run carefully designed experiments under carefully set conditions over and over because they’re trying to discern fundamental mechanisms in great detal, but that’s not something you have the ability to control in English. In English, your job is to find and describe those mechanisms based on the results of your reading, of other people’s readings, and of known principles of storytelling, language use and symbolism. Your results won’t be as precise as a physicist’s because you can’t repeat or control the experiment to that degree. Your results won’t be identical to your neighbour’s because you rant he experiment under different conditions (although you’ll probably find a lot of the same mechanisms as your neighbour if you’re examining the same piece of art). That doesn’t mean your results or the mechanisms you’re discerning are bullshit – it means our ability to experiment is restricted, and contrary to public perception, chemists and physicists deal with these problems, too.
“Authors retain all rights to works posted on BetaBooks, and can add or remove content at their discretion. BetaBooks makes no claim to any of the work posted on the site.”
My ability to proofread increases by 1000% after I hit “Submit”.
this is often because when you’ve submitted something (like fanfiction to ao3) it will be in a different font, size and framing than in your word processor. The text will look different in the new environment so your brain stops skipping what looks familiar (like a typo that has been there since the beginning).
So, tip: revise your work in a different font and size. I guarantee you’ll catch more typos and mistakes than otherwise.
For all my writers (ones I follow and the ones that thankfully follow me)
Thank god it isn’t just me. Definitely going to have to do this!
Some good news, I’ve been talking to two developers now and got them working together, we just had a meeting with the guys behind an existing large (millions of users) site similar to Tumblr, with a vibrant and open-minded community, and more importantly, it has open-minded owners who believe in free speech. They think we can get something done here to rescue the whole community.
I’m not allowed to reveal the site name yet. I can tell you it’s mainstream, open to everyone, open-minded and welcoming. (It’s not WordPress or any site owned by Facebook or Twitter. It’s not Pillowfort, that’s in closed beta. It’s not Ello, that’s mainly for artists. It’s not kinkspace or fetlife, those are too specialist. It’s not jux, that seems to be closed. It’s not Soup, that seems still in development and too small.)
One of the reasons for delaying the announcement for next few days is they don’t want a “land grab” where people take the names of current popular Tumblr users over there (cyber squatting). So they are looking at ways for existing Tumblr users to keep the same names on the new site.
More info over the days to come.
The plan is, broadly:
1. By December 9th, announcement of the new site and how to secure your username there
2. By December 10th, an online tool for bloggers to copy their existing content to the new site automatically, with the same tags and captions.
3. Bloggers will need to copy their content across between December 10th and December 17th if they want to use the automatic tool.
4. My understanding is that after December 17th there will be no public access to any “flagged” posts on Tumblr, but the original poster will still be able to see the flagged post (for a short time at least). Therefore, the original poster may still be able to manually download a post to their own PC or phone, after December 17th, and manually upload it to the other site. But if you have lots of posts that will take a long time, it will be better to use the automatic tool before December 17th.
Please understand that these dates are approximate and may change for technical or other reasons.
There may be a few rough edges or not so perfect looking site design on the transfer tool. Everyone is doing their best. The main goal here is to help as many people as possible preserve access to their content, in the short space of time Tumblr has allowed us, and preserve as much as possible of the Tumblr community spirit somewhere new.
The new site will cater for photo, GIF, text and html posts. It will not offer video and audio posts, due to cost reasons – maybe in future, but for now you will need to preserve video and audio content yourself in some other place.
If your Tumblr blog has a mixture of original content and reblogs, or all reblogs, all of that can be copied over to the new site. Reblogs will become “your” original content if nobody else posted them yet, otherwise they will be shown as reblogs. The devs are looking at ways to preserve attribution of reblogs back to the original Tumblr poster, if that person also moves to the new site.
Important: your Likes cannot be copied from Tumblr to the new site. You will have to go find the same posts again on the new site, and like them afresh.
(Similarly, existing reblog comments, asks, messages and other user interaction on Tumblr cannot be copied to the new site – that’s just too much to do, in the short time available.)
If you want to preserve any of your existing Liked posts on Tumblr, you will need to either: (1) download the post to your own PC, or: (2A) reblog it now to your own Tumblr blog, and then (2B) use the automatic tool, before December 17th, to move your whole Tumblr blog across to the new site.
If you have Liked a lot of posts here on Tumblr, the gridllr.com webapp should be able to help you do steps 1 and 2A quickly, I mean download or reblog.
(Someone complained to me today about the appearance of Gridllr on a phone. It’s best to use Gridllr on a PC, Mac or Tablet with a large screen.)
If you have liked a post here on Tumblr and the original poster decides to delete it, or even to delete their entire blog, some time before December 17th, then that post will be permanently lost. So if you want to be sure to preserve any of your Liked posts, you should best download or reblog as soon as possible. If it’s reblogged to your own blog it is safe from deletion, at least for next few days.
Obviously, you will lose access, after December 17th, to all past posts you have liked, if Tumblr has flagged them as NSFW. Again, the steps (1), or (2A) and (2B) covered above will be the only way to hold on to these posts.
Alienate Nazis from your content. Make them feel like it is not for them and is explicit in working against them. Whatever ways we can make Nazis feel socially unsafe and unwelcome on the basis of being Nazis is a good deed done.
reminder that nazis aren’t allowed to enjoy my posts
Get the fuck off my blog if you’re a Nazi or a Nazi apologist or think that we need to reach out to them
if a nazi was on fire and i had a cup of water, i would make sure they saw me pout it out onto the ground out of reach
if you’re a nazi/nazi apologist literally go duck yourself <33
i’m seeing a lot of people reblogging suicide hotlines and this is just a reminder that this is a suicide help line that works like a text-based instant messenger for people who may need to talk to someone but have trouble/are uncomfortable making phone calls
Never don’t reblog this. There are so many people who have such bad anxiety about phone calls. This can save so many lives
controversial but in my many years as a minor on tumblr i’ve never seen a single sex worker. they always block minors, mark their blogs as nsfw, and don’t spam the popular sfw tags. even if you, as a minor, actually look for them, as long as you listed your age truthfully in the registration, you won’t be able to find them.
what i, instead, saw as a minor was:
porn bots (which could be stopped by: captcha, double confirmation for accounts, not allowing url shorteners, not allowing rebloggers to delete captions, i would even be ok with hyperlinks not being allowed in reblogs)
fetishes and kinksters (which could be stopped by: adding more tags to the nsfw filter, including fetishes/kinks that appear as sfw)
people who forget tag their shit (which could be stopped by: an auto-tagging system for sensitive tags that would work similarly to the current block for apparently nsfw posts, but can give the op the option to delete incorrect tags)
pro-ana, pro-mia, romanticization of self-harm (which could be stopped by: banning the whole tag, as it just happened)
nazi, terfs (just kick them out for hate speech like twitter does)
pro-map thankfully only appeared once i was already past 18 but of course you could just ban the whole community + tag as it just happened.
prevent usernames with words that hate and pedophilic groups use to flag from being chosen at blog creation.
while i know that tumblr is a 13+ website, nsfw content was hidden from minors last year. most cp was deleted + outlawed (both irl and drawn) for good not even last month. and while those are recent changes they did make tumblr, overall, 13+ appropriate.
i do not care much for porn, i just feel like they are solving the problem the wrong way and punishing a group of people who did nothing to harm minors. there were smarter solutions to this problem that were ignored in the favor of a very sloppy solution that doesn’t even cover stuff like sfw kink blogs, porn bots who don’t post pictures (most of them), people who just won’t tag their nsfw, hate groups and other non-sex related communities who are extremely dangerous for minors.
Discount Deity of Death 