swan2swan:

untappedinkwell:

swan2swan:

As I understand it, the Order of Operations is as follows:

1. Focus on the Tax Bill. That’s happening this week. Shoot it down.

2. Immediately afterward, start promoting Doug Jones in Alabama and reminding everyone of Roy Moore’s problems. That election is on December 12.

3. In the meantime, Net Neutrality. The FCC votes on December 14th. Protest, boost, research, do whatever you can. 

I know #MeToo is important, I know Old Man Donald is still being a jerk, I know North Korea has a nuke, none of these are going to be dealt with before Christmas. There are three fronts to this fight: taxes, Alabama, FCC. These are the focal points. If we can win one of those, it’s going to have ramifications for the future. If we can win two, we’re in a pretty good place. We win all three, 2017 was a Good Year.

Taxes.

Doug Jones.

FCC.

Focus.

And then remind everyone to renew their healthcare. That deadline is December 15th.  

Yes that too

bemusedlybespectacled:

hey folks, I’m gonna introduce you to two very important fandom terms and they are watsonian and doylist 

they come (obviously) from the sherlock holmes fandom, and they are two different ways of explaining something in a story. say I’m a fan and I notice that, in the original books, watson’s war wound is sometimes in his leg and sometimes in his shoulder. the watsonian explanation is how watson (that is, a person within the story) might explain it; the doylist explanation is how sir arthur conan doyle (a person in real life) would have explained it. 

sherlock explains the migrating war wound by making the shoulder wound real and the limp psychosomatic. the guy ritchie films explain it by having the leg wound sustained in battle before the events of the film and the shoulder wound happen onscreen. the doylist explanation, of course, is that acd forgot where the wound was.

this is very important when we’re discussing stuff like headcanons and word-of-god. I see this when people offer watsonian explanations for something, and then a doylist will say something like “it’s just because the author wrote it that way,” and I see it when a person is criticizing bad writing/storytelling (for example, the fact that quiet in metal gear solid v is running around the whole game in a bikini and ripped tights) and someone comes back with “but there’s an in-story reason why that happens!” (that reason being she breathes through her skin).

there’s nothing wrong with either explanation, and really I think you need both to understand and analyze a text. a person coming up with a watsonian explanation has likely not forgotten that the author had real-life reasons for writing something that way, and a person with a doylist interpretation is likely not ignoring the in-universe justification for that thing. 

but it’s very difficult (and imo often useless, though there are exceptions) to try to argue one kind of explanation with the other kind. wetblanketing someone’s headcanon with “or it could just be bad writing” is obnoxious; dismissing someone’s criticism with “but have you considered this in-universe explanation” is ignoring the point of the criticism. understanding where someone is coming from is important when making an argument; acting like your argument is better because you’re being doylist when they’re being watsonian or vice versa is not.