@dont-rain-on-my-solangelo / dont-rain-on-my-solangelo.tumblr.com
Changeover🔊
First, you think the bird is a fool.
They you realize the bird is smarter than you and actually checked first.
Source: Mehdi Alibeygi
huh, the full video is almost two minutes long, and what got cut was entirely title and credits:
Reblog for the full length one… because you know heaven forbid people credit artists for their hard work that made us laugh or smile.
H2O just add water but it's 40 year old office worker Dave
I just want Dave to feel appreciated…. 🥺
I’m a sucker for niche rant videos about stuff I know nothing about. I don’t know shit about interior design but I will click on “10 worst interior design trends of 2021″ videos every time. I didn’t know who Onision was until I started watching people relentlessly roast his books (which I will also never read). I haven’t played Yandere Simulator or any of its myriad clones or spiritual successors but I have watched hours upon hours of videos outlining why they’re bad and Yanderedev is worse. Do I care about cryptocurrency or play any MMORPGS at all? No. Do I know an unreasonable amount about both Earth 2 and Cryptoland? Yes. I haven’t read a modern YA book since The Hunger Games but boy have I watched a lot of people nitpick new releases.
Same
Analyses and Video Essays consume me
If a computer game that my one of my favourite youtubers is analysing is cheap and within my preferred genres (and the analyser doesn’t seem to hate it), I will buy it and play it so that I can watch their videos with context. If its expensive the video goes on my ‘watch later’ list and I wait for a sale.
What are your favorite youtubers that do essays and analysis? I especially love long-form stuff.
Have I ever watched a single episode of Pretty Little Liars? No, not at all.
Am I gonna watch this guy go into an over 4 hour analysis about every episode? ABSOLUTELY.
I’ve got different favourites depending on what specifically I’m looking for. Errant Signal’s an old favourite of mine, and I especially appreciate his Blips series, where he takes a risk not being a slave to the algorithm for the sake of highlighting lesser-known games I’d otherwise never hear of. Games as Literature is also pretty good, and I LOVE the Architect of Games. Mandalore Gaming is good for a straight review. Sometimes I’m looking for something from more of a design perspective than a straight game focus and that’s when I turn to Game Maker’s Toolkit, Design Doc or, if I’m in the mood for some history instead, the Gaming Historian.
But honestly my some of my favourites are Jacob Geller and Folding Ideas just because you never know what you’re going to get. They’re not really game analysts, they’ll just take a random game or movie or book or location they visited and use it as a jumping off point to write an essay about something. And it’s usually pretty interesting.
And when I’ve finished a game and I’m not ready to let it go and I turn to Let’s Plays, I ALWAYS check Marstead’s channel first. He’s the most analytical Let’s Player I know, and approaches his games with an appreciation for their game design. Also extremely chill, which I appreciate in a player (I cannot watch those overhyped, half-screaming Let’s Players for any length of time).
shoutout to hbomberguy for releasing a video once per year about either a game I have never played or a relevant political issue and I will watch them both with the same enthusiasm over and over
Hbomberguy is great because every time you sit down to one of his videos you’re like “whatever else I get out of this hilarious and thought-provoking experience, there’s gonna be at least one ridiculously quoteable part that’s gonna make me smile at random points for a good year”
I'm really proud to be Jewish right now. This is an incredible thing this synogogue is doing. I've been scouring newspapers for ages, hoping to see a headline like this.
I'm really scared to be Jewish right now. I've been hoping for something like this, but now that it's happened, the weight of the bravery needed to bring this lawsuit is hitting. As the article alludes to, the anti-choice, anti-abortion movement is rooted in white Christian nationalism. The fact that it's Jews bringing this suit will put a target on the back of this community, and of the larger Jewish community. This fact will cement and inflame preexisting conspiracy theories like QAnon and the Illuminati that claim Jews run the world and control influential systems...such as the legal one. I can predict safety measures that will be taken (maybe extra security guards, maybe a new fence, maybe moving services back to remote only) to keep this synogogue safe.
I hope I'm wrong. I hope rising hate crime statistics against Jewish people since 2016 have made me needlessly on edge. I hope the rise in antisemitism I have experienced in my own life has made me overly-wary, overly-sensitive. But then I remember Colleyville; I remember that the front door of my synogogue is permanently closed now, that we only use the side door; I remember that because I sit on a committee, it became a requirement for me go through active shooter training. I hope I'm wrong.
I'm really fucking proud to be Jewish right now. But I'm also really fucking scared.
Article text under the cut
fucked up how colors look different depending on what screen you’re looking at them on. that should be illegal I think
this fucking shit, you know
I spend so much time carefully picking and adjusting the colors in every single drawing I make that I’d probably lose my mind if I didn’t just repeatedly push this out of my memory and pretend it’s not a thing. Why am I reblogging a blank empty post that doesn’t say anything??? Weird
good news! you can’t make sure that everyone will see the correct colors on their own device, but you can make sure your monitor is as accurate as possible for printing and sharing by calibrating it!
there are a bunch of free monitor tests, but here’s an easy one you can use. the passmark and eizo tests are also pretty good, though passmark doesn’t work in your browser. be warned that some tests may cause eye strain.
you can either use the settings built into your monitor itself or use the display color calibration settings in your operating system to adjust the settings until everything looks correct, and then enjoy your accurate colors.
REBLOG TO SAVE A LIFE
Photographers, too. Color calibrate your monitors if you intend to print or sell your work. There’s a ton of info out there for this.
do y'all even know how much i hate being an “elder queer” at 40? a whole goddamn generation before me was wiped out by a plague that politicians deemed not their problem bc it was killing the “right” people. like. this was OPENLY STATED. i spent a large chunk of my childhood going to funerals. nevermind the fact that killing queer people for being queer wasn’t codified into law as a hate crime until i was a junior in high school.
i should NOT be an elder queer, i should be middle at most. i am a middle aged queer. most of the elder queers died.
when i was growing up i didn’t go to pride parades, i went to pride marches. because that’s 100% what they were in the 80s and 90s.
from the absolute bottom of my heart, LEARN OUR FUCKING HISTORY. a generation was nearly wiped out so you young queers could be here. don’t let that have been in vain, please.
the fact that people have reblogged this and tagged it “q slur” makes me want to eat glass.
*GASPS* Are you goddamn kidding me??? I fucking hate the lack of infrastructure in my country. God.
Dude if I could take a train 400 miles anywhere I would pay 14 dollars just for a seat, never mind all those amenities. Jeez.
Reasons I remind myself I don’t like my country number who knows what
While this is super cool in and of itself, I’d also like to remind people that modern high speed rail (most of which is in China these days) operates at around 200 miles/hour (China’s fastest train actually operates at 370+ mph but that’s an absolute state of the art maglev, the 200 mph number is average rail speed). If we actually invested in these train systems, you wouldn’t even need an overnight ticket to make a 400 mile trip. To put that in an American context, it would allow you to get from New York to Los Angeles (the famous Cannonball Run taken by car enthusiasts for decades) in about 15 hours, which is 10 hours better than the current Cannonball Run record. With that kind of speed, you could take an evening train halfway across the country (Boston to Chicago would be ~5 hours) for a weekend trip.
Trains are not just more convenient (no driving!), but technologically superior to cars.
Hey runners (and walkers)! Thought this might be helpful :)
Shoelace Voodoo
The heel slipping one is awesome if you have to wear orthotics because it stops them from slipping round inside your shoe
Oh! I’ll have to try this
oh my god. oh, oh my god. the wide forefoot one… oh my god bless you you beautiful hero
Ian’s Shoelace Site – https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ – is the page for all these lacing patterns and more.
He’s got specific lacing advice for skates and tall boots and there are decorative patterns and I recently relaced my skate shoes for both a wide forefoot and less friction on the laces so it’s easier to tighten and loosen them but he also has lace-locking patterns so that shoes stay exactly as tight as you laced them the first time and it is just a VERY GOOD website.
Like. I’ve been buying shoes the wrong size because it’s often hard to find wide shoes but the lacing pattern for a wide forefoot means that my big hobbit feet actually fit into the previously too-tight running shoes and sneakers I had.
oh gods my boyfriend isn’t home and I forget the english word for this thing and it’s bAD he usually helps but i cAN’T
I WILL ASSIST?
you know that little sea bug with the stupid hands and it has a home but it changes homes sometimes because it gets too big for it?? what is it???
Hermit crab??
I’m going to sit on Torpenhow Hill, drinking my chai tea and reading a biology book about Eurasian brown bears (Ursus arctos arctos).
Don’t forget some naan bread.
So you can read your book about bear bear bears on hill hill hill hill with your bread bread and tea tea.
One thing about fandom culture is that it sort of trains you to interact with and analyze media in a very specific way. Not a BAD way, just a SPECIFIC way.
And the kind of media that attracts fandoms lends itself well (normally) to those kinds of analysis. Mainly, you're supposed to LIKE and AGREE with the main characters. Themes are built around agreeing with the protagonists and condemning the antagonists, and taking the protagonists at their word.
Which is fine if you're looking at, like, 99% of popular anime and YA fiction and Marvel movies.
But it can completely fall apart with certain kinds of media. If someone who has only ever analyzed media this way is all of a sudden handed Lolita or 1984 or Gatsby, which deal in shitty unreliable narrators; or even books like Beloved or Catcher in the Rye (VERY different books) that have narrators dealing with and reacting to challenging situations- well... that's how you get some hilariously bad literary analysis.
I dont know what my point here is, really, except...like...I find it very funny when people are like "ugh. I hate Gatsby and Catcher because all the characters are shitty" which like....isnt....the point. Lololol you arent supposed to kin Gatsby.
I would definitely argue that it’s specifically a bad way….a very bad way.
Depending on the piece of media, it could be the intended way to interpret it and thus very effective. When I watch Sailor Moon, I know at the end of the day that Usagi is a hero. She is right, and her choices are good. She and the Sailor Scouts may make mistakes, and those mistakes can have consequences, but by presuming the goodness of the protagonists, I can accurately describe what actions and values the story is presenting as good. (Fighting evil by moonlight. Winning love by daylight. Never running from a real fight. Etc etc)
If I sit around and hem and haw about whether or not Usagi is actually the villain because she is destined to reinstate a magical absolute monarchy on Earth in the future, then I'm not interpreting it correctly. I can write a cool fanfic about it, but it wont be a successful analysis of the original work.
But like I said, that doesnt work for all pieces of media, and being able to assess how a piece of media should be analyzed is a skill in itself.
I was an English major. One of our required classes was Theory & Criticism, and I ended up hating it specifically because of the teacher and the way she taught it, but the actual T&C part of it was interesting. And one of the things we learned about was all the different ways of reading/interpreting/criticizing media - not just books, ANY form of media.
Specifically, I remember when we read The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James. We had special editions of the book where the first half of it was the novel itself, and the last half was like five or six different critical analyses of the book from different schools of theory. The two I remember specifically were a Marxist interpretation and a feminist interpretation. I remember reading both of those and thinking “wow, these people are really reaching for some of this”, but the more I read into the analysis and the history of those schools of thought, the more I got it. So for my final paper for that class, I wrote an essay that basically had the thesis of “when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”. If you have trained yourself to view every piece of media through a single specific critical lens - well, you’re going to be only viewing it through that lens, and that means you’re going to read or watch it in such a way that you’re looking for the themes you’ve trained yourself to look for.
My teacher didn’t like that, by the way; she’d wanted each of us to pick one of these schools of thought we’d been learning about and make it “our” school of thought. She wanted us to grab the a hammer, or a screwdriver, or a spanner, and carry that with us for the rest of our lives. She somehow didn’t expect me to pack a toolbox.
My point is: Like OP said, sometimes the tool you need is a hammer. Sometimes you need a screwdriver. Sometimes you can make a hammer work where what you need is a screwdriver, but you’re going to end up stripping the screw; sometimes you can use a screwdriver in place of a hammer, but it’s going to take a lot more effort and brute force and you risk breaking the screwdriver. Sometimes you need a wrench and trying to use a hammer or screwdriver is going to make you declare that the bolt is problematic and should never be used by anyone. Sometimes what you really need is a hand saw, and trying to use any of the others...well, you can, but it’s going to make a mess and you might not be able to salvage the pieces left over.
These skills aren’t being taught in school anymore and you can see it in the way high school aged kids act about media and stuff.
They wouldn’t survive something like Lolita because I swear they’re being taught to turn their brains OFF and be spoon fed all their thoughts by someone else.
It’s really creepy.
I promise these skills are taught in school. I'm an English teacher. In a school. Who teaches them.
Now, Lolita is generally reserved for college classes. But a lot of the rationale behind continuing to teach the "classics" in high school (beyond the belief that a shared literary foundation promotes a better understanding of allusions and references) is that a lot of the classics are built on these kinds of complex readings and unreliable narrators and using historical and cultural context helps in their analysis. (I do think that we should be incorporating more diverse and modern lit into these classes, please understand)
Do all schools or individual teachers do this *well*? No, of course not. Do all students always really apply themselves to the development of deep critical thinking skills when their teacher pulls out A Tale of Two Cities? Also no.
But this isnt a "public school is failing / evil " problem. Being able to engage in multiple forms and styles of analysis is a really high level skill, and my post was just about how a very common one doesnt always work well with different kinds of stories.
OP, why do you describe analyzing Sailor Moon in a different way than (you assume) the author intended as "hemming and hawing?" I would argue there's a lot of value in approaching texts at a different angle.
Because ignoring context, tone, and intent when analyzing media is going to lead to conclusions are aren't consistently supported by the text you are looking at.
"Usagi is a villain because she's a queen and I think absolute monarchy is bad" ignores the way that Usagi, the moon kingdom, and basically all aspects of the lore are actually framed within the story. None of the characters' actions or motivations make consistent sense if we start from the assumptions that "Usagi = monarchist=evil" and it would cause you to over look all the themes and interpretations that DO make consistent sense.
At some point you have to take a work at face value and see what it is trying to say.
Is the breakdown of monarchy actually relevant to the themes and messages presented in Sailor Moon? No, not really.
So focusing on the Moon Kingdom monarchy and the ethics there of is sort of... besides the point. The Moon Kingdom is a fairy tale, not a reflection of reality.
I’m not actually interested in the tax policy of the Moon Kingdom, you know?
Now, is it *cool* to look at works in various ways? Sure! Are some people interested in the tax policy of the Moon Kingdom and want to explore what that would look like? Sure! And honestly if you want to explore the ramifications of idyllic fairy tale monarchies on the real world, then that’s really cool too!
But if you are looking at a work to understand what it is trying to say with the text itself, then you need to take some of its premises at face value. Usagi and the Sailor Scouts being the Good Guys is one of those premises.
And really the “Usagi is secretly a princess from the moon” is just a part of the escapist fantasy for most little kids watching more than it has anything to do with actual themes of monarchy.
There is a lot of value in being able to look at a text from various angles. And it’s perfectly okay to use a text and concept as a jumping off point for other explorations.
But the problem comes when people say that Usagi was definitively a villain in Sailor Moon, or that say Steven Universe with themes of family and conflict resolution is excusing genocide by not destroying the Diamonds. It misses the point of the fantasy. It misses the important themes, the lessons and point of the show to look at it like that.
Basically: reinterpretations are cool, but you gotta know how to take a work on its own premises too.
Exactly. Like, magical princess that shows how monarchies (or the idea of princesses in general) is broken or toxic? Utena and Star vs The Forces of Evil are right there.
The idea of a cute talking cat granting girls magical powers to turn them into warriors against evil and getting them killed being evil? Not a good take on Luna, but Kyuubei in Madoka? Exactly this. That's like, the point of Kyuubei- to riff on the trope that Luna, and Kero, and Mokona represent.
Media can raise all sorts of interesting conversations and discussions and ideas. But there's a very real difference between trying to awkwardly force those readings on a work where the tone and framing and context don't support it and acting like the media is actually supporting those messages, and using those ideas to explore it in a different work or to analyze the trope across the genre more broadly.
Moral and pure does not a protagonist make, and fandom is rife with that exclusive interpretation of storytelling. OP makes really good points; this thread is one of the best analyses I've read about lit crit on this site lately.
Stories aren't made in a vacuum-- every trope/theme/character archetype comes from somewhere and (general) you do yourself a disservice by viewing everything as whether it's morally uncorrupted or not.
Unmute !
POV: You are Simba
Love it when you can see the impending disaster before it hits, lol.
you know the camera is going down, so you’re just guessing which dog it’s gonna be
until suddenly you know
ELLIOT PAGE 2022 | Ruven Afanador ph. for Esquire
actors are overpaid to keep the rest of the crew underpaid so that the producers and directors can keep siphoning off money to keep themselves rich without anyone ever really batting an eye and the only activism actors are ever going to engage in is "why as a woman am i only being paid $3 million as opposed to that white man being paid $8 million? 🤨" meanwhile the non-union crew that the director hired because union workers asks for "too much" is 1 bounced check away from poverty
Teanna from Fab Socialism puts it so well in this video, but if you're having trouble visualizing how production teams exploit their crews: think of a movie as a corporation (because in fact, many production teams do choose to incorporate their films to receive government benefits including subsidies, rebates, and tax write-offs)
