Hen Mazzig

Magneto was a Zionist, you fucking pinecones.

Shana Tova!!! May your enemies, haters, and those who wish evil upon you be cut off. The blessing for the leek has always felt resonant but this year it's been on my mind a lot. For me at least, 5785 is a year of practicing healthy boundaries and taking care of myself - even if I have to run on spite. I hope everyone has a safe Rosh Hashanah ❤️

thinking again about TvTropes and how it’s genuinely such an amazing resource for learning the mechanics of storytelling, honestly more so than a lot of formally taught literature classes

reasons for this:

basically TvTropes breaks down stories mechanically, using a perspective that’s not…ABOUT mechanics. Another way I like to put it, is that it’s an inductive, instead of deductive, approach to analyzing storytelling.

like in a literature or writing class you’re learning the elements that are part of the basic functioning of a story, so, character, plot, setting, et cetera. You’re learning the things that make a story a story, and why. Like, you learn what setting is, what defines it, and work from there to what makes it effective, and the range of ways it can be effective.

here’s the thing, though: everyone has some intuitive understanding of how stories work. if we didn’t, we couldn’t…understand stories.

TvTropes’s approach is bottom-up instead of top-down: instead of trying to exhaustively explore the broad, general elements of story, it identifies very small, specific elements, and explores the absolute shit out of how they fit, what they do, where they go, how they work.

Every TvTropes article is basically, “Here is a piece of a story that is part of many different stories. You have probably seen it before, but if not, here is a list of stories that use it, where it is, and what it’s doing in those stories. Here are some things it does. Here is why it is functionally different than other, similar story pieces. Here is some background on its origins and how audiences respond to it.”

all of this is BRILLIANT for a lot of reasons. one of the major ones is that the site has long lists of media that utilizes any given trope, ranging from classic literature to cartoons to video games to advertisements. the Iliad and Adventure Time ARE different things, but they are MADE OF the same stuff. And being able to study dozens of examples of a trope in action teaches you to see the common thread in what the trope does and why its specific characteristics let it do that

I love TvTropes because a great, renowned work of literature and a shitty, derivative YA novel will appear on the same list, because they’re Made Of The Same Stuff. And breaking down that mental barrier between them is good on its own for developing a mechanical understanding of storytelling.

But also? I think one of the biggest blessings of TvTropes’s commitment to cataloguing examples of tropes regardless of their “merit” or literary value or whatever…is that we get to see the full range of effectiveness or ineffectiveness of storytelling tools. Like, this is how you see what makes one book good and another book crappy. Tropes are Tools, and when you observe how a master craftsman uses a tool vs. a novice, you can break down not only what the tool is most effective for but how it is best used.

In fact? There are trope pages devoted to what happens when storytelling tools just unilaterally fail. e.g. Narm is when creators intend something to be frightening, but audiences find it hilarious instead.

On that note, TvTropes is also great in that its analysis of stories is very grounded in authors, audiences, and culture; it’s not solely focused on in-story elements. A lot of the trope pages are categories for audience responses to tropes, or for real-world occurrences that affected the storytelling, or just the human failings that creep into storytelling and affect it, like Early Installment Weirdness. There are categories for censorship-driven storytelling decisions. There are “lineages” of tropes that show how storytelling has changed over time, and how audience responses change as culture changes. Tropes like Draco in Leather Pants or Narm are catalogued because the audience reaction to a story is as much a part of that story—the story of that story?—as the “canon.”

like, storytelling is inextricable from context. it’s inextricable from how big the writers’ budget was, and how accepting of homophobia the audience was, and what was acceptable to be shown on film at the time. Tropes beget other tropes, one trope is exchanged for another, they are all linked. A Dead Horse Trope becomes an Undead Horse Trope, and sometimes it was a Dead Unicorn Trope all along. What was this work responding to? And all works are responding to something, whether they know it or not

Jen: *says anything*

Matt: 

After weeks of watching the violent protests for Hamas. The defacing of monuments. Calling for genocide. Actually physically attacking Jewish people and their supporters. The outright ugliness of it all because antizionism is just antisemitism folks..

It was refreshing to see the March for Israel today in Washington. Completely peaceful, no destruction. No calls for violence against anyone!!!! I felt like, for a moment, everyone could see what the true majority in America think. America really is pro Israel, and I'm proud of that fact.

Hope you're doing well. Are the reactions to your treatments getting better? Is there any way any of us can help you and your family?

Hi love!

Absolutely this. I've been watching vids from both pro-Israel and anti-Israel demonstrations for over a month now, and the difference is very clear. I haven't seen a single pro-Israel rally where there was violence or calls for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, no "Gas the Palestinians" calls, no stomping on Palestinian flags... In fact, I've heard more than one person mentioning their pain for innocent Palestinians who have also been victimized by Hamas.

I'm also gonna make it clear that those are anti-Israel, not pro-Palestinian, protests... Because those people weren't demonstrating when Palestinians were being killed by Assad. They weren't demonstrating when Palestinians were being victimized and even killed by Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority. They weren't demonstrating for Palestinians to be treated equally, and be given full rights, freedom and dignity in places like Jordan and Lebanon. If these people only take to the streets when they can blame Israel, and when they use these rallies to attack Jews, they're not pro-Palestinian. They're anti-Israel and antisemitic.

Meanwhile, Gazans themselves ask for something completely different from westerners:

And absolutely, I believe that yesterday, they also published a survey that showed that the majority of Americans stand by Israel? One Nonnie mentioned to me there's a certain difference among younger Americans. Another sent me an article that supported this:

According to a recent Harvard CAPS Harris poll, 51% of young adults can “justify” the massacres perpetrated by Hamas, in part because their main exposure to Israel since October 7 came from TikTok videos.

This is at least in part because of social media selling a simplistic narrative, but in part also because of American universities pushing it. That's been happening to a great degree because of Qatari funding of these universities. Qatar's been responsible for this, when that state is one of the greatest human rights violators, and when it has a record of antisemitic attitudes. Hopefully, now that this funding has come to light, these institutes will stop throwing their Jewish students and moral stance under the bus in favor of Qatar's money.

Thank you for asking! *hugs* I'm still having a reaction, but it's not as bad, and I'm trying to take a lot of naps to help ride out the worst of it. And thank you also for offering help! Honestly, I don't wanna ask for anything for myself or my family. If you can donate to the Israeli Red Magen David (the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross), that would be amazing, but ONLY if you can. I don't want anyone to feel obligated, but I know that they and other rescue and different aid organizations in Israel have been working non stop, and could use any help. Thank you again! Sending ALL the love.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

Non-Jews: please reach out to your Jewish friends tomorrow. They will need it.

I say it as someone who doesn’t expect any of my non-Jewish friends to do so, because they didn’t do it last year either. When I asked a couple of them about it, they said they didn’t know why it would affect me. They didn’t know why the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust would affect me more than them. So if you can, please hug your Jewish friends.

Just to remind you, this is the wonderful record that UNRWA schools have, when it comes to the education they provide to Palestinian kids (and we can all figure out what it translates into):

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)