A Pile of Junk

Blacklist, block and mute at will. You don’t owe anybody anything.

Turn off those notifications.

Decide when you log on. Don’t use social media at breakfast if it will stress you out all day. Don’t use it before you go to bed if it will keep you up. Find a fun ritual to replace it, like a video game or craft thing.

Consider which platform allows you to avoid topics that upset you. For example: tumblr is kinda shit for fan fiction because everything ends up in the same tag. The older forum-style platforms are much better for finding content you enjoy and avoiding content you don’t.

Leave online communities that don’t spark joy. You don’t need to stay in a place where everyone is always fighting. You don’t need to stay in communities where you are afraid to speak your mind or to make mistakes.

Ask yourself: could this ‘debate’ also be a conversation instead? Don’t debate people who seek debate to upset you. Don’t debate people who seek debate to get an audience for bigotry. Don’t debate people who seek debate to win instead of to learn. Don’t debate people who do not acknowledge your humanity.

Repeat to yourself: doomscrolling is not activism. Nothing in the world gets better just because you read, liked and reblogged posts about how terrible things are. 

Why didn’t Dinotopia ever blow up like Harry P*tter or whoever the heck? The books are beautifully illustrated, feature what would have been very accurate looking dinosaurs at the time of publishing (with a later book even retroactively adding feathers to some of the dinosaurs), and it takes place in the real world, so it could allow for lots of people to put themselves in the settings and story like a lot of people did with H*gwarts and stuff. 

They even have something akin to HP’s house system, with some teenagers being given saurian partners and placed within a habitat group (such as forest, desert, beaches, etc) to learn more about the world and explore themselves and their relationship with Dinotopia. So not only do you get a habitat to be placed within, with whatever personality traits that implies, but you also get a cool prehistoric friend to come with you!

It’s such a rich, beautiful, setting, and I wish more was done with it. George Lucas was even in talks of making a Dinotopia movie at one point, and while that didn’t seem to go anywhere, it’s said the city of Theed on the planet Naboo in Star Wars Episode I was heavily inspired by Waterfall City from Dinotopia.

Tweet 1: Notes from the Female Anti-hero panel at Boskone with Tamsyn- Some notes from her Female Anti-hero Panel-

"Harrow is a super-huge dick"

"Harrow needs medication"

Tamsyn confirmed played renegade femshep in Mass Effect

Tweet 2: She wrote Harrow as mentally ill, specifically schizophrenic which she struggles with in real life

Stuggled with making Harrow sympathetic but not woobified

"You can look at Harrow and want to kick her into a well"

Tweet 3: "You shouldn't want to have coffee with Harrow at Starbucks, she wouldn't like any of the drinks anyway."

Her favorite movie as a kid was the original She-ra movie from the 80s

She really wants to write a piece of shit protagonist who isn't "saved" at the end.

Thinking critically about a text requires that long before you think in terms of good and bad, you consider intents and outcomes, you understand both the immediate and wider context of what you’re looking at, and you acknowledge that fiction is subjective. It’s about thoughtful examination of all aspects of the work.

What function does this element serve in the work? Why might the author have included it? How was it incorporated, and how does it interact with other elements? Setting aside possible intents, but looking closely at context and execution, what impact does this element have on the work as a whole? On different possible audiences? How does all of this play into or deviate from greater patterns across media?

And for the love of god please stop forgetting:

What lens or framework am I using to examine this text? What are the limitations or problems with that framework? What are my biases? (<-Americans do this challenge) If I choose to examine this through a different lens, how does that change what I see?

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