45 Boxes of Books

Y’all “critical thinking” does not equal “criticism”.

I am very tired of saying positive things about characters and getting told I need to do some critical thinking (so that I’ll see the characters are actually bad). No. That’s not how that works. I already did some critical thinking and came to the conclusions that these characters are wonderful. Criticism or straight up character bashing is not more enlightened and is not how critical thinking works. “Critical thinking” is not “thinking about all the bad or problematic aspects of something.” It’s looking objectively at evidence, looking at context, recognizing and examining personal biases and assumptions, considering what assumptions and biases are being used in a given argument by other people, etc. Sometimes this process brings up criticisms, yes, but sometimes it also leads to the conclusion that something is actually good despite it being made out to be bad. 

Also criticism is not synonymous with lambasting, haranguing, and being a shitstain to others. I'm sorry your parents made you internalize that but criticism and critique is actually a function of mutual dialogue and not you shouting insults at people for not interpreting something the exact same way as you.

I've seen plenty of people talking about how we see Murderbot's been growing and healing in Platform Decay as it's actually installed a mental health module (!) and does regular emotion checks (!!), but I have yet to see anyone talk about another huge indicator of Mb's growth: not wanting to give its humans a gun because it's afraid that shooting people will give them trauma!!! What a huge change from previous books, where it repeatedly stated that it didn't like nearby humans to have guns because they might shoot it, even by accident while trying to help. To me that's huge!

When I fail to respond it's an homage to letters getting lost at sea

i don't know what lm montgomery put in barney snaith but he is by far my favorite male love interest, like she really said "here's this unkempt hobo with a shady past who is also well read and thoughtful and bitter who is not much of a talker and yet somehow has disney princess vibes, the girlies will go wild for him" and you know what? we did

Putting the term "Catholic guilt" on a high shelf where fandom can't reach it until everyone learns how to identify characters who are very very clearly coded as Protestant.