*Doctor Who Theme plays*

why do you never engage with black characters, why do you always think the same type of character is transmasc/fem, why do you only find romance interesting to the point of ignoring plotlines so you can create ships

If you are a writer, or creator of media of any kind, you need to treat yourself the way you would want an employee of a good company to be treated.

You should not be stressing yourself out to the point of *only getting 4 hours of sleep per day* just to get in a specific count of words.

You should not be loading a million objectives onto your plate for content creation of videos to the point you are *relying on ChatGPT just to keep up with your workload*.

If you find yourself ripping out your hair in distress as a creator because you've got so many things piling up, that is your sign to *stop*, take a step back, breathe, get a drink of water, then sit down and start cutting down your task list.

Eliminate all of the extraneous tasks and goals from your list, and focus on just the big main ones, then set yourself an actual, workable, *livable* schedule that doesn't drive you straight into the deep end from sheer stress.

If you are self employed, that means you set your own hours, and sometimes, that means you need to take a step back, and make sure you're actually giving yourself enough hours in the day to *be a person* and not just a "creator"!!!

Instead of accepting a million extra tasks and objectives and deadlines, sit down, ask yourself what you actually want to do with your work and how you can best achieve that at a *reasonable pace*, then start organizing your schedule.

Make sure if you're giving yourself the task of writing for 8 hours a day, that you're actually getting 8 hours of sleep, and spending 8 hours doing things that *are not work*!

If you need to, you can *literally* set up a separate room in your home, or cordon off a specific corner of a room for writing/editing/filming (including water bottles and small snacks), and before you step foot in that corner to do your writing for the day, you can *literally* write down on a white board, or your phone, literally anything, when you "punch in" for the day.

Set a timer for four hours or so, then when those four hours are up, wrap up whatever writing/editing/filming thing you're doing to a good stopping point, then "punch out" again and take at least 1 hour to get some nice food aka a proper meal, something nice to drink, and watch some television, read a book, walk around the block, etc!

Once your lunch hour is up, *then* you can go and "punch back in" and back to writing for another four hours. When those four hours are up, unless you're actively enjoying yourself and want to keep going out of earnest enthusiasm instead of a stressful drive to write more, *stop writing for the day*, "clock out" of your work area, and go spend the next 8 hours doing house work, errands around town, hanging out with friends, relaxing around the house or the garden, spending time at the local park -- literally *anything* you would be doing if you got off work at an office/day job.

If you are self-employed that *you* need to take responsibility for your own work schedule, and part of that means not working yourself to the bone and actually taking the time to relax and de-stress!

If your self-assigned workload is so high you're depriving yourself of sleep, and turning to *generative AI* in order to keep up -- thats your sign that your workload is *too fucking high* and you need to seriously downsize.

The eight hour work day was fought for and won through blood, sweat and tears of millions of marginalized workers over *decades*, and even 8 hours is shown to be too long by most studies; if you wouldn't want your friend or loved one or even just a potential employee to be working 20 hours a day on a project, *then you need to make sure you're not putting those expectations on yourself.*

Take care of yourself, and stop increasing your workload!

Focus on *quality* over *quantity* !

First step: participate.

Second: Every share is super valuable, especially shares outside of Tumblr, with people outside of the USA, and people over the age of 30!

The following are really effective for getting the word out:

Flyers! On noticeboards, on tables, in eBay/Etsy parcels, etc. Printable PDF here, or Google Doc here for easy copying and editing. This is a top method for reaching people who aren't super-online.

Sharing this Facebook post in local LGBTQ+ groups. Facebook is particularly good for reaching under-represented age groups.

WhatsApp forwarding. We have a WhatsApp channel here with regular shareable posts that you can drop into LGBTQ+ groups or share one-on-one.

Any creative idea you have for sharing the survey URL: survey.gendercensus.com

And here are some links to social media posts for easy sharing on all platforms:

Tumblr, obvs

Bluesky

Fediverse (Mastodon)

Instagram

Threads

Facebook

Thank you everyone!

Especially because Cassette Beasts is getting a sequel, now more than ever is the time to criticize the bigotry we see in the original game, so that the developers can see it, and realize "oh, crap, I didn't realize I did that, I'll make sure not to do it in the future!"

I've already gotten a response from one of the developers thanking me for my criticism of the ableism in the original game in regards to the flashing lights and flashing animations! Which means we've already taken the first step to the sequel, and Cassette Beasts itself, being more accessible!

You *have* to learn to notice the "little racisms" that "don't matter" because they are the foundation for larger forms of racism later.

It matters that Squirey's remasters have the "evil" one being darker skinned and male-coded to make it seem scary and evil, and the "morally pure" one being lighter skinned and female-coded to make it seem pure and protective.

It matters that Poppetox's design uses bastardized ideas of voodoo, and references Baron Samedi while painting him as the exact opposite of what he actually does. (Poppetox wanting to enslave the player character and others to turn them into mindless puppets!)

These things matter, even if you think they're not a big enough deal to criticize.

All antiblackness is too much antiblackness. All antiblackness needs to be criticized, especially when we know there's gonna be a sequel now, if we want that sequel to be better than the first.

If you cannot even bring yourself to criticize ""unimportant"" bigotry in media, let alone *literally just not throw a fit about other people doing so*, then no one can trust you to take a stand against ""more important"" bigotry, and it really is that simple.

Bigotry won't get defeated by everyone closing their eyes and pretending it doesn't exist when it's in its most simple and easy to criticize form.

If you can't do something as simple as criticize media you like, or simply *not get pissed off about other people doing so*, then you're literally not an ally to anyone in the fight against bigotry. Cuz you're literally fighting on the side of the bigotry.

Cassette Beasts has bigotry in it, from antiblackess to exorsexism, and ableism, and abuse apologism. That doesn't mean the whole game needs to be thrown down the toilet and you're evil for playing it, and literally no one is arguing that.

What it does mean is that if we as a fandom need to be responsible and criticize the problems we do see, and listen when other people criticize problems they see, because that's literally the only way anything will ever improve.

Cassette Beasts 2002 cannot be better than Cassette Beasts if no one is willing to point out where Cassette Beasts went wrong.

I've already gotten the developers to be aware that the flashing lights and animations cause real danger to their audience, which means the sequel is already that much more likely to be accessible, and they'll probably update the original game to fix it, too! Cuz these people seem to actually give a fuck!

These developers have not asked you to lose your shit over people criticizing their game. They are actually listening to and thanking people for critical feedback.

Stop defending someone else's racism without being asked to, and start criticizng the bigotry you see in the game, so that the sequel will have less of it!

You are enabling AI companies to become gatekeepers of knowledge and giving them the ability to censor whatever they don't want you to see. You are abandoning your ability to find information independently and giving a corporation the power to decide what is worth knowing.

These people will see critique of media they supposedly enjoy (or, occasionally, will claim they don't even care about said media), try to make a "witty" remark to "dunk" on the person critiquing the racism, when they get rebuffed, they'll launch into making a huge essay supposedly defending said media against the critiques of being racist by making wildly unsubstantiated claims that don't hold actual water against the actual text as cited by the OP doing the critiquing, and then they'll fall back on insults and Whataboutisms.

Its especially funny when someone like this sees people making very mild critiques about racism in media, and fly completely off the handle, going out of their way to make an entire new blog supposedly about "spreading positivity" for said media... Only to spend the entire blogs lifespan screaming and throwing a tantrum that people could possibly critique their media for being racist.

And then almost as soon as they've made this "positivity" blog, they just as quickly abandon it because they don't *actually* have anything meaningfully positive to say about the media they supposedly love, *they just want to shut down discussions of racism*.

Fun fact: you can love media and still critique the problems in said media. You can point out that a media you enjoy has a problem with colorism and misogyny, and still enjoy that media.

The *only* way creators of media can know that they are perpetuating harm, is if people point it out.

If the only "positive" thing you can say about a media you claim to love is fumbling to shut down media critiques of it... Do you *actually* enjoy that media, or do you just desperately not want to talk about how racism is systemic and is present in most media and no media is "pure", and you need to be able to think critically about the media you consume so you, yourself, do not perpetuate that harm?

Make sure you have time-stamps enabled in your settings, so you can see that that entire thing happened in the course of one day, and it was all in response to this critique about racism (including specifically colorism) in Cassette Beasts.

A thing that would be *incredibly easy* for the 3 developers to take note of going forward in the sequel to avoid the same racist trope, especially when other lore-inclusive designs were also made in response that fix the racism and misogny issue (the whole thing about "divine femininity" and "women/femininity = pure" is part of white patriarchy upholding men as physically stronger than women, especially when the darker skinned male-coded Remaster is portrayed in the game as more 'savage' than the lighter skinned female-coded Remaster!)

Anyways, wanted to make this post before I forget, because watching this unfold was the usual level of incredulity about the lengths media stans are willing to go to shut down discussions of racism, especially when they immediately drop their attention from giving "positivity" as soon as they get blocked by the people doing the critique, then suddenly, they can't even think up *headcanons* about their favorite characters beyond "this character has sweaty hands" and that's the sole "positivity" post on their blog "dedicated to positivity".

If you've seen one racist media stan react to criticism of their favorite media, you've seen all of them, because they *inevitably* jump through the exact same hoops every time, and then abandon the topic all together once their target stops responding, or they face enough backlash for their obvious racism.

Shutting down all dicussions critiquing your favorite media does not enrich a fandom or help creative teams or authors, all it does is kill fandoms and give creator's a pass on continuing to perpetuate harmful stereotypes either without them realizing what they're doing, or worse, having been informed of the harm, continuing it anyways, and being rewarded by the passive members of fandom with continued defense and funding.

If you want to be a published author, game creator, movie maker, and more, you need to learn to accept critique of your work, and you can start cultivating that ability by learning to first accept critique of media you enjoy.

You can critique media you enjoy, and still enjoy it. Talking about the harmful sterotypes in media does not mean you are "not allowed" to still enjoy that media --

local matchmaker losing it over yet another unrealistic demand from the clientele 🤣🤣

After working as a matchmaker for so long, I've started to doubt science a bit. Because you never know what kind of outrageous demands your next client will make. Yesterday, a 32-year old female boss who owns her company contacted me. Elementary school graduate, earns 6 million RMB annually, owns a house and a car, and with an attractive appearance. She said, Teacher Hei, I have no financial requirements regarding the man's financial situation; an annual salary of over 100,000 RMB is sufficient. I can buy the house and car, but I have three hard conditions; they must all be met. I said, as long as it's not illegal or against the law, I'll try my best to help you meet them. She said, firstly, the man must be born on the second day of the second lunar month, on the day the Dragon Raises its Head. Even a day off is unacceptable. I said fine. Second, the man's name must contain the character for rain or water. I said fine. Third, and most importantly, he must be able to summon rain. I said, what? She said, he must be able to summon rain, the kind of ability that can make rain fall from the heavens. I said, do you mean you want me to help you find a Dragon King? She said, "Are you crazy? I'm seriously looking for a partner." To be honest, after she yelled at me like that, I couldn't tell for a moment who was the lunatic. She said, her grandma said she was lacking the element of water in her life, so she must find a man who can call the wind and rain, or else she will not live well in this lifetime. I said, Lady, is there a possibility that rain isn't something you can simply pray for? It is part of a hydrologic system that will only happen when the cycle is complete. She said, I've been to school, so of course I know. I'm not looking for someone who can 100% call the wind and rain. That would be too difficult. I said, so what do you mean? She said, I only require that the likelihood of rain be higher whenever I'm with him. I said, isn't that still asking for rain? She said, I already said it's not about controlling the weather absolutely. It's a kind of metaphysics, a feeling, a probability. Are you unable to find a candidate that meets my requirements, which is why you're going around in circles with me? I said, Lady, is this still only a matter of whether I can meet your requirements or not? I need to confirm whether you're looking for a human being or a deity? She said, I'm looking for a human being. I said, "Then tell me, besides the director of the Bureau of Meteorology, who else can fit your requirements?" She said Jam Hsiao (Taiwanese singer nicknamed 'the Rain God'). I said, "Damn it! Don't I know he's the Rain God? If I could recruit Jam Hsiao to be my male client, would I still be beating around the bush with you? I'm a matchmaker. My male clients still need to eat at lunchtime when they are hungry, work overtime in the evening, and drink soda when they are thirsty. They're ordinary people, not gods or dragon kings, and certainly not people who can summon wind and rain. "Even if there is a Dragon King, none of his nine sons meet your requirements, because their names don't contain the character for water!!"

[ID: Ten screenshots from Black Lightning, showing Dr. Jace, a white woman with black hair, speaking to her laptop while she records video.

“But to keep things light and cheery, and because Dr. Stewart will be reluctant to share her formula, I’ll be forced to engage in various bonding rituals to gain her trust.”

She sits back, hand on her chin, looking at the camera. “Human connection is such a puzzling subject, so I did my research, and I created this handy checklist.” She holds a tablet up to the camera, smiling proudly.

The tablet shows a numbered list that reads:

Make eye contact

Listen sometimes

Pretend to care

Find commonality

Use compliments

Dr. Jace continues speaking, saying, “I am very confident Dr. St–”

She is cut off suddenly as the scene changes to show her being slammed into a wall by Lynn, who is shouting, “Bitch! I’m going to kill you this time!” while Dr. Jace grunts in pain.

End ID.]

if you would like context, she murdered and experimented on Black kids to turn them into enslaved weapons for the US military. She’s a mass murderer who tortures children, and this scene really feels like commentary on how neurodivergent white people like to pretend they can’t be racist/shouldn’t be held accountable for their racism because they ‘don’t know any better’”

I cannot count the number of autistic people I’ve seen pretending that they shouldn’t be held accountable for their racism or other bigotry because they’re autistic. 

She’s not evil because she doesn’t make eye contact and doesn’t know how to interact with people and make friends.

Pulling the “This rhetoric is only ever said by people who’ve never read a Batman comic in their lives” card, like a couple lines every dozen issues referencing his charity work are all you need to smooth over that he’s orders of magnitude richer than even the real life richest men in the world and lives in a city with hungry people while he builds hideouts on the moon to stash all his high tech gadgets. Clearly only somebody who’s never read a batman comic in their life would think he could still do more!

Pulling the “He’s not real, you know.” line as if it’s never occurred to them before now that people will discuss the real world through the lens of fiction. That maybe the dude’s trying to make a point about the wealth disparity in the world around them rather than literally proposing we tax Batman to solve all our social ills.

Doing the “This is so tired. How many times do we have to have this conversation?” bit as if there’s not some inherent repetition in discussing a pop culture icon that’s been endlessly reiterating on the same themes since the forties.

and then turn around and torture them