If y’all ever need pictures of animals tucked into bed please do not hesitate to hit my line I have a very small folder specifically for that

Actually here you all go

If y’all ever need pictures of animals tucked into bed please do not hesitate to hit my line I have a very small folder specifically for that

Actually here you all go

@mattibee u

If you're fifteen or older an still sleep with a stuffed animal please reblog this.

*sweating and shaking* I put a lot into this lol. There's a blurb about it below the cut along with the b&w version

commissions are still open btw! More info here

but no yeah lets have the conversation:

"the CEO doesnt want to run that kind of website" Excuse, shouldnt have bought the 'go nuts show nuts whatever' website if thats the case. APPEAL DENIED

"we have to follow the TOS of the appstores we're hosted on" Excuse item one, no you dont, item two, you have since those days implimented infrastructure that would allow pornography and sex work on this platform Without violating TOS of any applicable app store. APPEAL DENIED

"we own the site we get to make the rules" Incorrect, this site has only ever made profit when the users willed it. we collectively own the site as a hive mind and no legal change in ownership will change that. APPEAL DENIED

"we have to keep this website safe for the children who use it" Argument based on fallacy banning pornography and sex workers does not prevent pornography and sex work from occuring on the site, it only forces aforementioned users to hide and avoid labling their content appropriately, which REDUCES the safety for children and sex workers alike instead of increasing it, this has been shown to the point that making this argument at all is tantamount to admiting fascist intent APPEAL DENIED

Reblog it. I want this to be on Tumblr radar by end of the week, i want my notes to be useless from the discourse, i want every single person on Tumblr to have seen this post at some point

Every now and then I'm reminded Real People with Actual Jobs use tumblr and I've always been legitimately curious what all you weird adults are up to when you're not on this site and with tumblr's New Poll Feature I can finally get an answer! (or the closest approximation of an answer possible with only 10 available options h a)

Houseki no kuni cosplay FE3H, just in time for Halloween

♈♋♑♌♉♊Signs♒♍♎♓♏♐

The splendid and colorful Beijing Opera!

One thing about fandom culture is that it sort of trains you to interact with and analyze media in a very specific way. Not a BAD way, just a SPECIFIC way.

And the kind of media that attracts fandoms lends itself well (normally) to those kinds of analysis. Mainly, you're supposed to LIKE and AGREE with the main characters. Themes are built around agreeing with the protagonists and condemning the antagonists, and taking the protagonists at their word.

Which is fine if you're looking at, like, 99% of popular anime and YA fiction and Marvel movies.

But it can completely fall apart with certain kinds of media. If someone who has only ever analyzed media this way is all of a sudden handed Lolita or 1984 or Gatsby, which deal in shitty unreliable narrators; or even books like Beloved or Catcher in the Rye (VERY different books) that have narrators dealing with and reacting to challenging situations- well... that's how you get some hilariously bad literary analysis.

I dont know what my point here is, really, except...like...I find it very funny when people are like "ugh. I hate Gatsby and Catcher because all the characters are shitty" which like....isnt....the point. Lololol you arent supposed to kin Gatsby.

I would definitely argue that it’s specifically a bad way….a very bad way.

Depending on the piece of media, it could be the intended way to interpret it and thus very effective. When I watch Sailor Moon, I know at the end of the day that Usagi is a hero. She is right, and her choices are good. She and the Sailor Scouts may make mistakes, and those mistakes can have consequences, but by presuming the goodness of the protagonists, I can accurately describe what actions and values the story is presenting as good. (Fighting evil by moonlight. Winning love by daylight. Never running from a real fight. Etc etc)

If I sit around and hem and haw about whether or not Usagi is actually the villain because she is destined to reinstate a magical absolute monarchy on Earth in the future, then I'm not interpreting it correctly. I can write a cool fanfic about it, but it wont be a successful analysis of the original work.

But like I said, that doesnt work for all pieces of media, and being able to assess how a piece of media should be analyzed is a skill in itself.

I was an English major. One of our required classes was Theory & Criticism, and I ended up hating it specifically because of the teacher and the way she taught it, but the actual T&C part of it was interesting. And one of the things we learned about was all the different ways of reading/interpreting/criticizing media - not just books, ANY form of media.

Specifically, I remember when we read The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James. We had special editions of the book where the first half of it was the novel itself, and the last half was like five or six different critical analyses of the book from different schools of theory. The two I remember specifically were a Marxist interpretation and a feminist interpretation. I remember reading both of those and thinking “wow, these people are really reaching for some of this”, but the more I read into the analysis and the history of those schools of thought, the more I got it. So for my final paper for that class, I wrote an essay that basically had the thesis of “when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”. If you have trained yourself to view every piece of media through a single specific critical lens - well, you’re going to be only viewing it through that lens, and that means you’re going to read or watch it in such a way that you’re looking for the themes you’ve trained yourself to look for.

My teacher didn’t like that, by the way; she’d wanted each of us to pick one of these schools of thought we’d been learning about and make it “our” school of thought. She wanted us to grab the a hammer, or a screwdriver, or a spanner, and carry that with us for the rest of our lives. She somehow didn’t expect me to pack a toolbox.

My point is: Like OP said, sometimes the tool you need is a hammer. Sometimes you need a screwdriver. Sometimes you can make a hammer work where what you need is a screwdriver, but you’re going to end up stripping the screw; sometimes you can use a screwdriver in place of a hammer, but it’s going to take a lot more effort and brute force and you risk breaking the screwdriver. Sometimes you need a wrench and trying to use a hammer or screwdriver is going to make you declare that the bolt is problematic and should never be used by anyone. Sometimes what you really need is a hand saw, and trying to use any of the others...well, you can, but it’s going to make a mess and you might not be able to salvage the pieces left over.

These skills aren’t being taught in school anymore and you can see it in the way high school aged kids act about media and stuff.

They wouldn’t survive something like Lolita because I swear they’re being taught to turn their brains OFF and be spoon fed all their thoughts by someone else.

It’s really creepy.

I promise these skills are taught in school. I'm an English teacher. In a school. Who teaches them.

Now, Lolita is generally reserved for college classes. But a lot of the rationale behind continuing to teach the "classics" in high school (beyond the belief that a shared literary foundation promotes a better understanding of allusions and references) is that a lot of the classics are built on these kinds of complex readings and unreliable narrators and using historical and cultural context helps in their analysis. (I do think that we should be incorporating more diverse and modern lit into these classes, please understand)

Do all schools or individual teachers do this *well*? No, of course not. Do all students always really apply themselves to the development of deep critical thinking skills when their teacher pulls out A Tale of Two Cities? Also no.

But this isnt a "public school is failing / evil " problem. Being able to engage in multiple forms and styles of analysis is a really high level skill, and my post was just about how a very common one doesnt always work well with different kinds of stories.

OP, why do you describe analyzing Sailor Moon in a different way than (you assume) the author intended as "hemming and hawing?" I would argue there's a lot of value in approaching texts at a different angle.

Because ignoring context, tone, and intent when analyzing media is going to lead to conclusions are aren't consistently supported by the text you are looking at.

"Usagi is a villain because she's a queen and I think absolute monarchy is bad" ignores the way that Usagi, the moon kingdom, and basically all aspects of the lore are actually framed within the story. None of the characters' actions or motivations make consistent sense if we start from the assumptions that "Usagi = monarchist=evil" and it would cause you to over look all the themes and interpretations that DO make consistent sense.

At some point you have to take a work at face value and see what it is trying to say.

Is the breakdown of monarchy actually relevant to the themes and messages presented in Sailor Moon? No, not really.

So focusing on the Moon Kingdom monarchy and the ethics there of is sort of... besides the point. The Moon Kingdom is a fairy tale, not a reflection of reality.

I’m not actually interested in the tax policy of the Moon Kingdom, you know?

Now, is it *cool* to look at works in various ways? Sure! Are some people interested in the tax policy of the Moon Kingdom and want to explore what that would look like? Sure! And honestly if you want to explore the ramifications of idyllic fairy tale monarchies on the real world, then that’s really cool too! 

But if you are looking at a work to understand what it is trying to say with the text itself, then you need to take some of its premises at face value. Usagi and the Sailor Scouts being the Good Guys is one of those premises. 

And really the “Usagi is secretly a princess from the moon” is just a part of the escapist fantasy for most little kids watching more than it has anything to do with actual themes of monarchy.

There is a lot of value in being able to look at a text from various angles. And it’s perfectly okay to use a text and concept as a jumping off point for other explorations.

But the problem comes when people say that Usagi was definitively a villain in Sailor Moon, or that say Steven Universe with themes of family and conflict resolution is excusing genocide by not destroying the Diamonds. It misses the point of the fantasy. It misses the important themes, the lessons and point of the show to look at it like that.

Basically: reinterpretations are cool, but you gotta know how to take a work on its own premises too.

Exactly. Like, magical princess that shows how monarchies (or the idea of princesses in general) is broken or toxic? Utena and Star vs The Forces of Evil are right there.

The idea of a cute talking cat granting girls magical powers to turn them into warriors against evil and getting them killed being evil? Not a good take on Luna, but Kyuubei in Madoka? Exactly this. That's like, the point of Kyuubei- to riff on the trope that Luna, and Kero, and Mokona represent.

Media can raise all sorts of interesting conversations and discussions and ideas. But there's a very real difference between trying to awkwardly force those readings on a work where the tone and framing and context don't support it and acting like the media is actually supporting those messages, and using those ideas to explore it in a different work or to analyze the trope across the genre more broadly.

Moral and pure does not a protagonist make, and fandom is rife with that exclusive interpretation of storytelling. OP makes really good points; this thread is one of the best analyses I've read about lit crit on this site lately.

Stories aren't made in a vacuum-- every trope/theme/character archetype comes from somewhere and (general) you do yourself a disservice by viewing everything as whether it's morally uncorrupted or not.

Uhmmmm on some level I get what OP is trying to say, on another I disagree with "you have to take the media at face value".

Here is the thing: sometimes the takes the media has "at face value" are

1. Bad, or

2. Make no sense, or

3. Are badly written

Like take the Valdemar Series by Mercedes Lackey. There is a race here who is, basically, servants of the magical and cool Telyndra (prolly written wrong sorry): the Hertasi. By OP take the fact that a whole race is happily made of servants is unimportant in the analysis of the books which are about Other Things (the books are about Other Things). I disagree. The Hertasi are Really Frigging Important and the fact that a whole race is Happily Servile is Bad, pointing at it is not missing some mystical point about the books, it is pointing at a real flaw.

Like, the idea that I have to Accept The Author's View or Be Wrong is ... Iffy.

Another example: the Dragon Prince. The whole show is set up on the basic that Dark Magic Is Bad and Humans Are Evil. Because The Author's Say So. Ten seconds of deconstruction will point out that there are problems with how those things are presented. Pointing out those problems is not "missing the point". It is pointing out problems.

You are correct- and there is a very real difference between an author using really problematic tropes in a way that undercuts their own themes (like a happily servile race) and something like "well, Usagi is actually evil because monarchy."

Like, I have not read Valdemar. But I have read Harry Potter, and I could write a thesis on how the way the house elves / SPEW storyline within the books is a real failure within the series because it weakens the otherall themes the book is trying to achieve. It's sloppy and thematically confused. (Which...so much of those books are.)

I'm all for examining whether or not authors are successful in how they craft stories, and a big component of literary analysis is not just "what is the author trying to say" but "how well do they actually say that." (And sometimes "so, this is what the author is intending to say, and it's a shitty message." Or "I don't think the author intended to say this, but the story is so sloppy that this is how it turned out and that's not good.")

The argument here isn't "we should never criticize authors/stories" but that our analysis and criticism should be situated within the context, intent, and tone of the work. That we should examine the text itself to see what the text is saying and how well it is saying it.

But, to my very first example- if someone read Gatsby and was like "well, this is a bad book because Gatsby is a terrible role model! How are we supposed to root for someone like this?" Then they *haven't* identified a weakness in the book. They are just misunderstanding what the book is doing. That's the kind of mis-analysis that this post is really about.

Oh I agree with you. Gatsby is not supposed to be nice, or a role model. Rooting for him is not the point.

But I also think that taking a step back and, for example, pointing out "a lot of media pinpoints the value of a person in their blood or soul dynasty, and this focus in lineage in our collective colture could be worth a second look" is... Not wrong neither? It applies to sailor moon, as well as to, say, star wars and yes Harry Potter. Sure, Luke Skywalker or Usagi aren't wrong for that, but the fact that in their respective universes the Important People ends up being related and important because of that is... Iffy?

Or is this also a bad take?

As a broader analysis of Chosen One narratives, I think that's fair. That's a critique or analysis of a trope.

What I would be careful about is how we navigate a critique of the trope with our analysis of the works themselves. Because the work that trope is doing in the media you are analyzing may serve a larger purpose, and both things can be true.

Like, is it true that the cultural idea of how some people are destined for greatness can encourage a complacency of power structures or that it creates narratives which disregard the importance of agency? Sure. Would I say that Sailor Moon, as a piece of media, shows that magical destiny deprives Usagi of agency? No. No more than I would argue that Luna is problematic for recruiting child soldiers, largely against their will.

But then you have something like the new She-Ra which really explicitly explores how the idea of a magical destiny can undermine Adora's sense of agency and self worth- She comes to believe that her value comes from her ability to achieve this destiny at any cost. And that has to be challenged and overcome within the story.

That was actually one of my big complaints about the Star Wars sequels. We set up Rey to be a "nobody", and paired with Finn, it felt like a very direct commentary about how greatness doesn't need to be born out of bloodlines, but can come from anyone. And then Finn was sidelined and Rey ended up being a Palpatine, and that whole theme was just trashed for something I felt was way less interesting and engaging. (It also introduced the idea that the Stormtroopers were capable and deserving of being saved....and then promptly forgot about that and spent the rest of the films just slaughtering them.)

So that trope within the Star Wars sequels really bugged me because it led to inconsistency in the larger themes, but it doesn't bug me in Sailor Moon because the framing of it is never inconsistent with what that story is trying to do, though it can still be part of a larger analysis of that trope in media.

Does that...make sense? I feel like I talked in circles a bit there.

no no patrochilles mightve been the og dead gays but diomedes and glaucus were 100% the og enemies to bestfriends to lovers

Reblog With Your Favorite Obscure One Piece Characters And Why You Like Them

Mine is Mayor Woop Slap and that’s exclusively because I’ve been stuck on his name for years