#emcinerate

A lot of what I said when I used tumblr during college and grad school might (or could) have been re-written in a more sensible way, but the gist is (not necessarily in order)

Tumblr is a pretty good aggregator of news about cool, surprising things you've never seen anywhere else; it has a lot of interesting material on a variety of topics, and often I find myself "having learned about [topic] for the first time because of tumblr" or "having re-read some of tumblr's discussion of [topic]"

Tumblr is a pretty good, semi-anonymous, semi-curated, semi-automated means of reading and curating your social media dash, which can be done in a way that's not super toxic, especially in contrast with some other methods of the same kind (i.e. following people IRL is one way to do the dash thing, but it also can be toxic, as "you follow me and now I'm in your life! :)" posts that are so common on tumblr illustrate).

One major virtue of tumblr's method of curation is the relative lack of pressure to produce high quality content, which I find a relief from the endless and seemingly endless pressure of social media to produce high quality content. If I want to see posts with good information and links about a topic, I can click the relevant button on the dashboard, and usually I will get a mix of high quality posts and low quality ones, and often the latter will have a mix of good and bad links and so forth.

ahhh the ask caught on fire!!

I had a strong and immediate dislike for Rose when I was reading homestuck years ago -- in particular, the comic's portrayal of her as a bad person was upsetting to me.

Are you really talking about this now?

:D

…yeah, I guess I do. "Aliens" to me means "some kind of conscious nonhuman being from somewhere other than Earth." I would be interested in such a life. It is possible to have a kind of anthropocentric or solipsistic view of the world where the idea of the aliens exists is inherently interesting and relevant. I am a nonbeliever but a nonbeliever who does want to see for sure that aliens are real.

I actually haven't ever given this much thought, which is why I'm asking all y'all.

My first instinct is to say . . . Kokomono from Dennou Coil, because in-universe there's a detailed (if not entirely rigorous) explanation of how they work and they're like, not clearly a furry, but . . . still.

But they're just an anime catgirl, and the best possible examples of the realm of magical animals (to me) are the Deus Ex Machina from SF novels. Particularly the Homestuck "Player Troll" class, which is both cool and disturbing in a much more full-on way than Dennou Coil, but the prose is often a little too . . . purple for me.

So I'll go with Puyo from Mushi-Shi, who has a good personality and some memorable scenes/episodes, and also doesn't talk much.

My favorite animal is the platypus, although in my heart I am always an otter.

You see, my favorite thing about Homestuck isn't really about Homestuck. Homestuck is merely one of the many things in which I am interested, and the "favorite" thing has to be taken in its broader context. (E.g. for me the best books are the ones with the most compelling characters, and the best movies are the ones most likely to make me want to watch sequels and prequels -- I can't watch every movie in existence but there are movies I like for all the reasons a "good movie" as opposed to a "bad movie" would give me.)

In any case, there are some "things" I like and some "things" I don't care much about. (I've been reading Homestuck since 2011, after all, so I'd like to think I've settled on some of the things I care about.)

A "thing" I really like are the things that are the opposite of "things" I don't care much about. Things I care about are usually some kind of meaning, whereas my favorite things are usually meaninglessness. Sometimes things that I care about are things that feel right or true and that tell a story, or things that are "great art" -- but that's all secondary to the quality of the work of art itself, which is more important.

A "thing" I don't like are the things that are just a lot of the same old plot devices and concepts that are always re-enacted with minor variations. The best examples of this are in the first act of Homestuck, where so much of the plot is retreaded endlessly -- something that gets old in a very short time, if ever, and one should move on soon after starting the comic.

I tend to associate a lot of "meaninglessness" with the idea of randomness. Everything has to be the result of some cause and some effect; that means that there will always be some degree of randomness in any process. I don't mind a lot of "meaningless" results if they're consequences of something. But randomness has the great flaw that if it is going to happen there is not really any reason for it to happen; it is a decision, and as such could be anything, and in that sense it is no more meaningful than "meaningless." The result of a random choice is no more meaningful because of the randomness than the result of an inevitable and unavoidable choice (such as "the cause that happened to cause the effect") is meaningful. And there is this thing that happens all the time in stories where some thing is inevitable and unavoidable (such as the death of the hero). It happens over and over, and so it happens just as quickly in fiction as in real life, because fiction is just a way to make this inevitable, unavoidable fact -- which could in any case have happened in reality -- into a form of entertainment. That is what "reality is boring" is: it is a boring and meaningless way to make fiction even more boring and less meaningful.

Randomness, no matter how "diversified" it is, is one of the things that makes it boring, and it makes it boring in the same way that a monotone, inescapable voice would make one bored.