PSA To Stay Diligent With Your 2020 Vote

Young voters look ready for a surge in turnout not seen since Obama's historic landslide

Joe Biden is already benefitting from eating into key Donald Trump support among seniors and white voters. But now there's evidence that younger voters—who largely side with Democrats—could turn in numbers not seen since Barack Obama jazzed the demographic back in 2008, according to the Washington P

PSA to stay diligent with your 2020 vote

Please remember to do your own research, for your own state, for your own county, on whether voting in person or receiving your mail in ballot and dropping off in person is best for YOU.  Some counties may be heavily affected by mail delays, others may experience little to no delays.

Understand how your county has handled voting machines and paper trails in the past, and whether dropping off a paper ballet is more advantageous, or vice versa.

Register yourself

Register others

Most states allow early in-person voting!

If you can safely vote in person, vote in person.

If you don’t want to vote in person, most states allow mail-in or absentee! You do not have to mail-out your ballot, you can drop it off in person!

Do not panic and cancel your mail in ballot if that is your preferred method!

Constantly check your registration and encourage others to do the same

Vote as early as possible in your State

If you receive your ballot in the mail and want to avoid USPS uncertainty then drop off your ballot at a ballot drop off box or your local county elections office.

If you must return your ballot in the mail, the USPS recommends sending at least 1 week before Nov 3rd, but you should return it as early as you are possible to account for compounding USPS delays.

If you do not receive a ballot in the mail or you later change your mind to vote in person, then most states allow you to still vote in person!

Follow this guide to ensure the integrity of your vote and others, whether in-person or mail-in!

Become a paid poll worker! The Trump Campaign is recruiting 50,000 poll “monitors” across 15 key states to challenge people they think shouldn’t vote. Keep them honest!

Plan your vote here with detailed information on your state regarding whether you can vote by mail, vote early in person, and more.

Axios has also put together a quick reference of voting methods and dates by state.

Another comprehensive list was put together regarding voting dates and deadlines, absentee rules, and answers to other frequent questions voters have, all in one place. Mobile friendly view here.

And of course, continue to hold your reps and senators and state AG and the USPS board of governors’ feet to the fire!

Stay informed

Jennifer Cohn is an attorney and election integrity advocate, covering important developments and information to make your vote count.

Democracy Docket provides analysis and tracks court cases and lawsuits across the country regarding your vote.

AO3 blocking

Do you wish you had the ability on AO3 to block works by tag, author, title, or words in the summary? You need AO3 Savior. 

Step One: Install the Tampermonkey extension on your browser (link is for the Chrome extension, so if you use a different browser, just search for it). This will allow you to install the AO3 Savior userscript. 

Step Two: Install AO3 Savior. Click on the link and hit the Install this Script button (image below)

This will open the userscript in Tampermonkey. Click the install button there too (screenshot below)

Step Three: Install AO3 Savior config the same way. It’s a separate file because if you update the code, it resets all of your blocks so you need to input them again. By having the config separate from the rest of the code, the other code can update while leaving your block settings in tact. 

Step Four: restart your browser 

Step Five: Click on the puzzle piece at the top right corner of your browser.  Click on Tampermonkey and then into your Dashboard. From there, find ao3 savior config in your list of installed scripts and click on the edit button (screenshot below)

Step Six: edit the code to block the things you want to block. This might sound intimidating, but it’s okay! 

In this config file, scroll down and read through the text. The first settings are turning options on or off. Use “true” to have that feature or “false” to turn that feature off. For example:

// Set to false if you don’t want to see why works were hidden.    showReasons: true,

When the code starts with // that means that it’s a comment or instructions to you. Read that line and then make the change on the line below it. In this case, change the word “true” to “false” if you don’t want to see the reason why the work was hidden from you.

To block on author, edit this part:

// Exclude works with an author that exactly matches at least one term.    authorBlacklist: [‘Hated Author 1’, ‘smeyer’],

Find the author’s name on AO3 and copy it so that you get the spelling right. Then paste it in here. To make sure your syntax is right, make sure that the author name is inside the square brackets [ ] and also inside apostrophes ‘. Separate each author name with a comma , like you see in the example provided. 

You can do the same thing with tags by copy/pasting the full tag and putting it inside apostrophes in the tag blacklist section. Same thing for specific fic titles or for words that appear in summaries.

Step Seven: After you have made all of your changes, go up to File and remember to Save. 

Step Eight: You can now close that tab and head on over to AO3 where the only sign of those fics/authors/tags etc you blocked will be a little box telling you a fic has been hidden, and why. If you don’t want to see those boxes, change those settings to false in step 6. 

In future, if you ever want to block a tag, author, or work from your AO3 experience, just go back into your config file and edit them in there. 

Note: in order to get this on mobile, use Firefox. Other browsers do not allow userscripts on mobile

Welcome!

Hello lovely followers and welcome to my new blog! Honestly I just got bored and on whim decided to remake my whole account because I felt bored and was getting sick of my old blog. This blog probably won’t be too different in terms of content (or lack thereof lol) tbh but hopefully it’ll be a bit cleaner and more organized. Anyways while I’m setting up feel free to read through my carrd https://nehamerchant123.carrd.co/ 

Pokeball Interior Posters made by Susan Lao

Why One Detail of Disney’s Robin Hood Bothers Me And Always Will

Hi, welcome to my Ted Talk, today we will be dealing with something that has bothered me about Disney’s Robin Hood since I was a kid and I still cannot get over to this very day.

And it all stems from THESE THREE PEOPLE:

Maid Marian, Prince John, and King Richard

I’m going to preface this entire thing by saying THIS version of Robin Hood is very very VERY different than the source material, much like all Disney animated films, but it wasn’t really DISNEY who did the big changes… those just came over time with making things more… I’m just going to say “normal for society”, which is ultra double lame.

BUT that’s not the point, because that stuff happens everywhere and with everything, and if I started to complain about THAT we’d be here all day, and I’m already going to take more of your time than needed to complain about something SUPER unimportant from a children’s animated movie made in 1973.

ANYWAY!

So, in the movie the titular character, Robin Hood, is a fox.  Makes total sense, foxes are crafty, hard to catch, cunning, and known for getting into and out of situations that other animals would have difficulty with.  Take that and turn it into an anthropomorphic character and you’d get someone who would easily be against the normal laws, not BAD, but would do BAD to do GOOD. Robin is a show off when he wants to be, and quiet when he has to be.

He’s a pretty perfect Robin Hood, especially in the case of animated kids movies, his characteristics just work SO WELL with his personification as a fox. GOOD STUFF, if I do say so myself!

Little John, meanwhile, is a bear. Not just any bear, but a big ol’ lovable brown bear. This plays on the idea of Little John being a cheeky nickname because Little John is a big, strong, and above all the calm, cool, and rationally smart one of the two. Robin may be clever, but John is the big picture guy. Pun intended.

These two designs and animal choices work SO well with each other, and it’s because these two are so different yet they get along and honestly NEED one another that makes the differences so perfect.

ALAN-A-DALE IS A ROOSTER. BRILLIANT. I don’t even have to go into this, do I? What a GREAT call by making Alan-A-Dale a rooster.  Though, I feel a bit of his characteristics were also borrowed from Will Scarlet for the Disney version, but even that still fits everything. And, honestly, I don’t mind the blending of Alan and Will, it kinda works? Especially with the movie being as short as it is.

ROOSTER BARD. ROOSTER. BARD. So good, I mean c’mon. It’s perfection.

The Sheriff of Nottingham being a wolf is… okay. It’s okay. I get it though, having the wolf hunt the fox. Haha. Cheeky. Cliche, but cheeky.

I really have nothing to say about him, he’s just…okay. Dude’s a cop, so whatever. Not a fan of bootlickers, and the fact that they’re dragging wolves in the mud by making a wolf into a cop is… whatever. /He’s A Wolf Cop/

Personally, I don’t like Friar Tuck as a badger. It really doesn’t make sense to me, and I lowkey hate it that they totally missed so many opportunities. DOVE OF PEACE? LAMB OF GOD? Like FOR REAL, you coulda done something super cute like that, but NOoOoOoOoOoO… he’s a badger. And they kinda pick on him for half the movie, for no reason, and I don’t like that.

Still, Friar Tuck is cute, and a really fun character and they do some clever animation stuff with his “badger”-ness. Still a bit of a missed opportunity.

OKAY NOW THAT WE’VE GOT THESE OTHER BIG ONES OUT OF THE WAY, IT’S TIME FOR MY ACTUAL PROBLEM!

MAID FRICKIN MARIAN IS A FOX.

WHAT THE FRICKEN FRICKITY FRACK?!

ABSOLUTELY NOT! Disney did this JUST because they wanted Maid Marian and Robin Hood to be THE SAME ANIMAL, and that’s ABSOLUTE BUNK!

WHY? Well there’s two BIG reasons that is irks me!

First, the idea that they HAD to be together because they were the same animal or they were made to be the same animal so it wouldn’t be “weird” that they were together.

LAME! UNINSPIRED! BULLSHI-

*ehem* Nonsense. Nonsense.

And it’s even MORE nonsense because of this little fact…

PRINCE JOHN AND KING RICHARD ARE HER RELATIVES!

MAID MARIAN THE NIECE OF PRINCE JOHN AND KING RICHARD!

Okay, you could argue that Maid Marian was adopted, or that King Richard married a lovely fox woman and the fox woman’s relative had a daughter and THAT was Maid Marian. And YES, that would make the situation plausible…

EXCEPT!

This is MEDIEVAL ENGLAND and they are ROYALTY and that kinda stuff wouldn’t fly even IF King Richard is the King.

WHAT I’M SAYING IS…

DISNEY ARE COWARDS FOR NOT HAVING A BIG LIONESS LADY DATE A TINY FOX MAN AND WE WERE ROBBED!

Talentless Nana: Audience vs Character Motivation

An Analysis of how Talentless Nana’s complex writing and take on protagonist sympathy, by a person who isn’t qualified to talk about it. Spoiler free for episode one until the cut, after that spoilers for a bit further into the manga, but nothing huge.

Every story has to deal with what I affectionately call the “who cares” principle. This idea is that for every story, there must be a reason the audience cares, why they want to see it through to the end. This reason usually structures the plot. A story cannot exist without a reason to see it through.

While people’s motivations to consume media differ incredibly (I.e “I’m only in it for the ships, I like the animation, I like the artist”) I believe in most stories there is something in the story that the audience is supposed to care about.

In a lot of stories it’s what the protagonist wants, hence them being protagonist. Part of this is because many protagonists are simply audience surrogates with varying levels of personality, but there is more to it.

This makes the task of audience sympathy fairly simple, all the creator has to do is endear their audience to the protagonist and soon we care about what they care about, making it easy for the creator to straight up tell us what we want via the protagonists mouth.

For example, in My Hero Academia, “the audience” wants to see Izuku become the most powerful hero. It’s what Izuku wants, and we like Izuku, so we want what he wants. That doesn’t mean people don’t watch HeroAca because they like other characters, or because the fights are cool, or they like the art, it just means that’s what the audience is supposed to want, or at least something they care about at some level. The audience wants to see what happens, so that’s where the story goes.

This is how a lot of stories work, especially popular ones.

As long as you have

So what does this have to do with Talentless Nana? Well… (spoilers below.)

Keep reading