Hi, this is Nat.
I mostly just reblog things, but sometimes I'll put up my original stuff.
Most of the stuff I reblog has to do with social justice and Homestuck, so be prepared for that if you follow me.
Ask me anything.
Hey guys, this is just a courtesy post to let Tumblr only friends know I won’t be using this Tumblr again for awhile, if ever, but I’m doing okay and there’s no reason to worry if you don’t see me again.
Love you all, keep well please.
Can someone please explain to me why so many people have said that Gamzee has no personality?
I can understand people being bored by him and really disliking his character, but saying that he’s got no personality seems like the weirdest thing to me. He has reasons for everything he does in canon and the only way I can see someone not getting that is if they weren’t paying attention while reading.
I think it has to do with the way Hussie has said he’s a joke character and his arc is basically an extended joke.
And I think the mistake they make is assuming that Hussie has ever written a flat character, so joke = flat and no effort put in.
But I really don’t think that that’s the case. Gamzee’s not a throwaway gag. He’s pretty clearly in for the long haul, I think. I mean, no one’s life is certain, but considering how Hussie’s set it up, I think that Gamzee is still going to be important to the plot. I don’t really see why he’d pare down his story to this few characters and have any of them be superfluous.
And it’s just not a thing he does to write flat characters. Pretty much everyone Hussie does has a really obvious personality. The dude’s practically a fucking wizard with characters. You can get a real sense of personality even from just a couple of pesterlogs, because he makes people who feel like real people.
Even Nepeta and Equius had very good, clear personalities. They weren’t fleshed out too well, and neither is Gamzee in some ways, but all of them are still very obviously different characters with different personalities.
So, yeah, I really don’t get it either.
I think that’s part of it, definitely. Someone else did just talk to me about this though and how since Gamzee has made such an impact in canon it might be easier for some people to see Gamzee as a plot device and his personality changing for that, which is wrong, instead of a character whose personality affected the plot. That and some people who just dislike his personality might claim that he has no personality because it’s an easy way for them to go oh I dislike this character this is why even though it’s still wrong, because in some ways already having a reason presented (even if it’s a fake reason) is easier than just admitting you dislike a character.
And yeah, Hussie has said Gamzee is a joke character, but that doesn’t mean he gave him no personality. It’s like you’ve said, Hussie has developed every character he has put into HS and even though some of them could do with more fleshing out they’re still very distinct from each other and other characters in different stories.
I think the best way you can tell that this is true is that in role playing there aren’t millions upon millions of interpretations for these characters that most of the rp community agrees upon as being correct for that character. There are only some characterizations that are agreed upon for each character, if there weren’t no one would be able to crit each other on playing styles for each character.
Heck, in the particular rp communities I observe and participate in there aren’t even that many Gamzees that people both like and agree with the characterization for and if you mess up while playing him you’re going to get a lot of feedback on that.
Yeah, that is a really good character litmus test. If people complain a lot about a character getting played wrong and there are only a few ways to play them right, then they probably have a personality.
I sort of feel for people who feel like they need to have a reason to dislike a character. Sometimes people can be pretty shitty if you dislike their favorite character or something, and act like you’ve somehow WRONGED THEM or something and you need a waterproof excuse for it.
But yeah, jeez, just say you don’t like them, most people aren’t going to jump down your throat. Don’t do Hussie the disservice of saying he’s created a plot-important character (joke or otherwise) who doesn’t have a personality.
Yeah, it’s pretty annoying to have someone jump down your throat for not liking a character, but the same people who’d do that will still do that when you give “no personality” as the reason for your dislike. And they might be even bigger jerks about it because of that reason.
It’s really okay to just say you don’t like a character though for the most part, and the people who hate you for it can get out, but making up an excuse for it that makes no sense just seems ridiculous. And yeah, for all the complaints one can have about Hussie no one should really be making up a complaint about him. He writes characters well, that’s part of why so many people have become interested in Homestuck.
can we all just agree that writing out a french accent like “zen she vent to zee store for her ceegarettes” is completely unneccessary and just makes it look like you’ve never spoken to an actual french person
is that a thing we can do
Yes we can agree on this.
Also, I’m keeping all your tags because those should be immortalized.
Can someone please explain to me why so many people have said that Gamzee has no personality?
I can understand people being bored by him and really disliking his character, but saying that he’s got no personality seems like the weirdest thing to me. He has reasons for everything he does in canon and the only way I can see someone not getting that is if they weren’t paying attention while reading.
I think it has to do with the way Hussie has said he’s a joke character and his arc is basically an extended joke.
And I think the mistake they make is assuming that Hussie has ever written a flat character, so joke = flat and no effort put in.
But I really don’t think that that’s the case. Gamzee’s not a throwaway gag. He’s pretty clearly in for the long haul, I think. I mean, no one’s life is certain, but considering how Hussie’s set it up, I think that Gamzee is still going to be important to the plot. I don’t really see why he’d pare down his story to this few characters and have any of them be superfluous.
And it’s just not a thing he does to write flat characters. Pretty much everyone Hussie does has a really obvious personality. The dude’s practically a fucking wizard with characters. You can get a real sense of personality even from just a couple of pesterlogs, because he makes people who feel like real people.
Even Nepeta and Equius had very good, clear personalities. They weren’t fleshed out too well, and neither is Gamzee in some ways, but all of them are still very obviously different characters with different personalities.
So, yeah, I really don’t get it either.
I think that’s part of it, definitely. Someone else did just talk to me about this though and how since Gamzee has made such an impact in canon it might be easier for some people to see Gamzee as a plot device and his personality changing for that, which is wrong, instead of a character whose personality affected the plot. That and some people who just dislike his personality might claim that he has no personality because it’s an easy way for them to go oh I dislike this character this is why even though it’s still wrong, because in some ways already having a reason presented (even if it’s a fake reason) is easier than just admitting you dislike a character.
And yeah, Hussie has said Gamzee is a joke character, but that doesn’t mean he gave him no personality. It’s like you’ve said, Hussie has developed every character he has put into HS and even though some of them could do with more fleshing out they’re still very distinct from each other and other characters in different stories.
I think the best way you can tell that this is true is that in role playing there aren’t millions upon millions of interpretations for these characters that most of the rp community agrees upon as being correct for that character. There are only some characterizations that are agreed upon for each character, if there weren’t no one would be able to crit each other on playing styles for each character.
Heck, in the particular rp communities I observe and participate in there aren’t even that many Gamzees that people both like and agree with the characterization for and if you mess up while playing him you’re going to get a lot of feedback on that.
Can someone please explain to me why so many people have said that Gamzee has no personality?
I can understand people being bored by him and really disliking his character, but saying that he’s got no personality seems like the weirdest thing to me. He has reasons for everything he does in canon and the only way I can see someone not getting that is if they weren’t paying attention while reading.
Shit, I’m on a roll today. I have this quadrant shit locked down TIGHT. B)
Crystal <3<3<3
Laura <><><>
Nat & Captain Morgan c3-c3-c3-
Me <3< FUCK YOU
WHAT KIND OF PERSON DID I GET MYSELF INVOLVED WITH
Nat and I have just officially settled into a quadrant together. c3- 5evar you fuck.
Welp
Hey fandoms, why the fuck hasn’t there been a post about this on my dash yet.
Oh my goodness. Well, now I might actually go back and read X-Men.
This is very true! They did their protesting online and got more support through the internet than they ever would have with any source outside of it. Thank you for pointing that out.
Strawman argument. The point is not that “online activism is ineffective”. Quite the opposite. Multi-million dollar corporations blacking out their sites is pretty effective. 4chan writing a script to sign a petition 40 times an hour isn’t.
Didn’t see this part earlier and I’ve been wandering to other sites, sorry about that, but that part of the argument wasn’t talking about the argument directly, I thought it was considered separate since I was talking to Edoro and not yourself. Edoro had just mentioned that without online support then those things wouldn’t have worked and Edoro is right. But I didn’t see that as us necessarily talking about petitions for that moment.
I’m sorry about the confusion there.
I mean, Edoro even started the discussion there with online activism and not petitions specifically. Maybe I am just the one who got confused in there.
Okay, I like that Tor is being spread around, but this idea that online petitions do nothing and isn’t taken seriously needs to get out.
You are aware that without online petitions that SOPA would have been voted on and passed, aren’t you? You’re also aware that with enough pressure with online petitions governments have backed down on other things. Believe it or not politicians do pay attention to online petitions and emails sent to them, it’s just that you need the numbers behind them to have someone pay attention. And if you’re telling people that their voice doesn’t matter in a petition then of course less people are going to sign it and of course there’s going to be less power behind it. You are hurting your own cause by telling people that their petitioning doesn’t matter. Stop telling people that that doesn’t matter.
In fact this entire thing saying that stuff online doesn’t matter is ridiculous. When people sign petitions online they are still saying that if their representative is going to support something they will also pull their support from when they vote too and will vote for someone else. They are still fully capable of boycotting things when they say they will online.
Why are you acting like doing something on the internet is useless when we have evidence to the contrary?
I would LOVE to see some proof. If online petitions actually work I’m going to have a much better day.
This is the only support I’ve seen for online petitions that cites any examples, and it’s on a blog run by an online petition company who stands to gain or lose substantial amounts of ad revenue from whether or not people use online petitions. And all the examples there do not actually include data that cites the petitions as effective. EG, no policy-makers specifically pointing at the petitions as effective, etc.
Slacktivism is poisonous because it’s placebo activism.
EDIT: And the SOPA shit “worked” because it was backed by giant corporations and organizations who threw the weight of their money against it. Wikipedia leaving GoDaddy alone was insanely effective. Google putting shit on their front page was effective. Wikipedia and Tumblr blacking out was effective.
http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/09/21/slacktivism-defeats-lawful-access/
http://www.frogloop.com/care2blog/2010/4/28/slacktivism-why-snopes-got-it-wrong-about-internet-petitions.html
Tell me if the second link is working or not, but if it’s the link I think it is it should have cited sources on why slacktivism and online petitions in general do work.
This is also a good article http://mashable.com/2011/10/24/slactivism-cause-engagement/ however it doesn’t deal with online petitions being effective by themselves.
I also sadly cannot get the page you linked to to load, any idea why that might be happening? I ask because it doesn’t seem to be my internet, it might just be something wrong with the link.
Also, yes big organizations backed it up, but they wouldn’t have gotten anywhere as far as it did without the peoples’ support and most of the support was just online as far as I know.
Thanks for the links, I appreciate you going to the trouble to track them down and post them, but again, all of them rely on the “correlation = causation” argument to prove their points, an argument which just doesn’t hold up.
That online petitions exist for contentious issues is undebatable. They exist alongside the real forces, but I have never seen any proof that they affect the issue in the least, except maybe to “raise awareness”, which is a dubious claim in of itself.
As one forums poster put it, “is Veronica Mars still canceled? Is Pete Rose allowed to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame? Did I ever get to purchase a copy of Mother 3?”
Actually, I thought the Veronica Mars petition, Pete Rose, and Mother 3 petitions all had too small of a number to be considered. Weren’t those all under their target goals or otherwise just a small enough number that most people didn’t care? I don’t remember the exact number on these unfortunately.
There was however a Save Kim Possible movement which used online petitions that I believe did work as it brought back the series even after it had passed the 65 episode limit that Disney used to put up (I think that was killed by this group).
And okay, what would you consider proof then? Does the government body have to come directly forward and say that these petitions stopped them? Because I don’t know that they will and I’m not sure that even really happens with bills presented in just a physical format.
