#so maybe this is just a product of too much media consumption | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

darkcircles4lyfe · 1 year

Text

labor of love

Thinking back on the books and shows that have captivated me most over the years, I’ve noticed that a significant part of my enjoyment comes through glimpses of the creator themselves. The human, fallible, subjective, personal, and unique perspective that bleeds through. I'm forever trying to see things from the other way around instead of as the audience. As I become more familiar with a person’s work, I almost imagine myself as the close friend who can see bits and pieces of their loved one in everything the write.

When I deal with fandoms or read and listen to media criticism, I inevitably get slapped in the face by the absence of this habit in other people. Maybe it’s because of concepts like “entertainment” and “consumption” making art into a product we spend our money on, and therefore we feel it owes us something. Maybe it’s the trend of pretending arbitrary differences in taste are actually somehow a basis for objective criticism. Regardless, even though I see plenty of reminders all over fandom spaces encouraging people to just enjoy things without worrying about whether they have some sort of intellectual merit, I don't see much acknowledgement of the creator’s point of view here.

So let’s talk about creative work as what it is: somebody’s dream, which brewed in the dark and solitary chambers of their mind, real but invisible to the outside world. By some miracle of good fortune and incredibly hard work, that dream is made accessible to us, the audience. It’s difficult to express how surreal that really is. Not all media is like this, of course. But sometimes you can see when a story is made with love, that the creator is so in awe of this miracle that they bring all of themselves into it. When that happens, I too fall in love, and preference no longer seems to matter. It’s not, “I enjoy this thing because it’s so ME,” it’s more, “I enjoy it because it’s so THEM.”

I worry sometimes that I have rose-tinted glasses on, but here’s the thing. We seem to over-associate criticism with logic, and praise with delusion, when in reality they are both limited. What I’m talking about here is neither. Sorry if this sounds cheesy, but I think “to love,” means “to know.” It’s where flaws and strengths blend together into a whole that is understood as it is cherished.

All these various observations have been tumbling around in my head more and more since I’ve gotten into this funny little thing called Boku no Hero Academia. It’s so popular, so polarizing, it draws in such a wide range of opinions from so many different kinds of people. I find it fascinating to watch, but, like I just said, it also tends to slap me in the face. Not out of personal offense, mind you. More than anything I’m stunned by how disconnected a lot of people are from this human element, whether they are being negative or positive. Even if they know enough to invoke the name of Horikoshi, they treat him like more of a figure than a real person.

It’s true none of us can actually truly know him. However, I think that while the author/audience relationship is a somewhat parasocial one, it’s worth acknowledging the mutuality of it as well. Let me take you all on a little journey to bring “the creator” down to Earth.

First, a few plain facts: Before bnha, Horikoshi was able to get two other manga into serialization: Oumagadoki Zoo and Barrage. The former lasted 37 chapters from 2010 to 2011. Barrage lasted 16 chapters, in 2012. Juxtapose this with Boku no Hero Academia, which as of writing this, has been running for over 370 chapters spanning 8+ years since 2014. Horikoshi is currently 36 years old (born in 1986).

Now let’s go back even further. His first one-shot was published in 2007, when he was 21. It’s called Tenko, and you can read it in English here. Most obviously, we can see that this Tenko character was later adapted to the Tenko we know in bnha, with a similar power, backstory, and appearance. But I actually think there are a few other ways we can draw comparisons from this genesis of Horikoshi’s career, all the way to the present.

Here is the intro that prefaces the 2007 one-shot:

^I get chills looking at this, and it makes me grin, no joke. Please take a moment to read all the little tidbits. It sounds like the intentionally foreshadowing first scene of a famous person’s biopic, but no one had a clue back then. I just find that so hilarious and moving at the same time.

So think of the Tenko one-shot as a window into who Horikoshi was as an artist and a storyteller pre- pro industry, with the assumption that certain aspects of his work are probably simultaneously a bit more upfront but also underdeveloped. You know, like a kid. There’s both honesty and naivety there. I can also think back to being around 21 myself (only a few years ago lol), about the stories I was writing in school, the workshop classes I was in with other people my age, what they were writing, the things that were important to us that we discussed informing our work. It’s a formative time, right?

One of the primary things I notice about the Tenko one-shot is that it centers themes of power, heroism, and trauma, and has a resolution which involves bridging misunderstandings.

It’s all very ideological, but also full of raw emotion. I read somewhere (sorry can’t remember where) Horikoshi saying that in formulating his idea for the ending of bnha, he has kept asking himself, what does it truly mean to be a hero? It seems he started asking that question way back in 2007, through this little story about swords and their wielders. The Tenko one-shot acknowledges that people and power are morally complicated, as is the idolization of heroes. The ending is hopeful, and looks ahead to times changing for the better by the will of progressively-minded and determined people.

This reminds me of the current arc of the bnha manga, and how the whole story might eventually end. Horikoshi has shown us that the villains are worthy of sympathy, that they are a product of society’s willful ignorance, that “heroes” have also done abhorrent things. But he has also embraced the pure optimism of youth. He seems eager to ask the big questions about right and wrong, and present us with both ambiguity AND certainty. The final fights are not at all a contest of strength, and there are no winners and losers. I’m very curious to see how far he takes this. I’m sure it will ruffle some feathers, and leave some people unsatisfied, but that’s probably a good thing.

The other major thing I notice in the one-shot is the character Hana. Now, as she shares her name with one of the main characters in Oumagadoki Zoo, and they are also similar in personality, that could be where the comparison ends. However, that’s nothing to say Horikoshi didn’t continue her themes elsewhere. The Hana in the Tenko one-shot is primarily preoccupied with her goal of becoming a warrior, and she was inspired some time ago by a warrior who saved her. This other warrior, conicidentally, turns out to be a brutal, a-moral, self-proclaimed demon, and he actually doesn’t take Hana seriously. In some ways, this reminds me of Hawks with his own idols, Endeavor and Lady Nagant, and more generally the idea in bnha that someone you look up to might not be all you imagine them to be. Like All Might and his hidden suffering. Or like Ochako looking up to Izuku up until his solo arc, after which she proclaimed, “special powers are one thing, but there’s no such thing as a special person.”

Speaking of Ochako. Hana’s primary source of angst in the story is that since she is a woman, her “masculine” ambition is laughed at and dismissed. Her dialogue with other characters is very direct about this, which I find pretty interesting.

You can really feel her frustration and see the blatant misogyny in how she’s treated. Even though things are stated kinda bluntly, it feels genuine, ya know? Note that she also wears men’s clothes, and nothing about her appearance is catered to the “male gaze.” I mention all this because to me it contextualizes Horikoshi’s more recent female characters. We can infer that he carried this perspective on, but in subtler and more nuanced ways that might not be immediately noticed. They may sometimes look like shonen stereotypes and be influenced by a misogynistic world, but this is likely an act of parody and/or criticism on Horikoshi’s part. For example Ochako’s fight in the sports festival illustrates a similar point to Hana’s struggle as Katsuki is the only one who takes Ochako seriously while other male classmates see her and other female opponents as inherently weak or potential love interests.

Hana remains ambitious, fostering her own motivation beyond her previous idol, and her ultimate goal is to help people. She reminds me so much of Ochako’s recent convictions. Ochako is fully herself now, and I’m confident her fight with Toga will show this even more, in a way that is much more direct. Since ch 374, I anticipate we may be getting confirmation of things pretty soon, so I wanted to restate that ASAP.

I’ve said this before, but it really does trouble me how a lot of people assume so much about bnha based on other shonen, disregarding the fact that Horikoshi is his own person. This either leads to undo criticisms or expectations that will likely not be delivered on. It makes me sad because I want people to enjoy this story for what it is. I hope this is a reminder that although it may seem on the surface like Horikoshi is rehashing the same old thing, his work really is a labor of love, of knowing. It is an homage, which both celebrates and deconstructs. Please remember that for the day when folks will be scrambling trying to figure out how we got here. Ironically, the signs were there all along, from the start of Horikoshi’s career, if you only care to look.

#Im back? kinda #please be advised that I am busy and tired etc etc #bnha 374 #bnha 375 #bnha 376 #bnha manga #bnha meta #media criticism #shonen #mha #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #uraraka ochako #toga himiko #bakugou kastuki #shimura tenko #lin speaks #long post

308 notes · View notes

pengemis-receh · 2 months

Note

Hi! No neg to you at all but i really need to get this out so feel free to ignore :D

I feel like fandoms as a whole has started to become WAY too comfortable in telling their creators what to do. The drama, complaints, and overall neg that i've seen people spewing to monsta is disheartening.

Critics are fine here and there, especially when mentioned in a respectable way. But people seem to forget that nothing is perfect, they see a flaw and just... zero in on it

Monsta can't satisfy everyone. Heck NO creator can satisfy everyone, but complaining about the thing something is lacking and saying negative things about the creators is helping absolutely NO ONE.

If anything it makes the creators ignore you, at worse double down or get disheartened and stop creating as a whole. Other than that it creates a negative sphere that makes some people (who were fine and enjoying this thing they like) to also feel unsatisfied or be negative as well.

ITS RUINING THE FUN FOR EVERYONE

I feel like these people don't realize how HARD it is to create let alone make a show.. its actually something i've realized in media consumption over the years; people have consumed so much media that they believe they "know whats best" or "understand better how to create this and that"

Creating is not easy. It takes time. It takes skill. WRITING isn't easy. ART isn't easy. ANIMATING isn't easy.

You want a specific episode that cater to what you like and how you want the characters to be? Write it. Genuinely write it.

Thats what fanart is for, fanfiction, fananimation.

Want something? Make it yourself. People have been spoon feed with free content that includes 3 seasons worth of a show, 2 seasons of its sequel show, 2 movies, AND comics.

And again. THESE ARE ALL FREE.

People do not REALIZE how privileged they are.

Do you know how many content now that is under a paywall? Do you know how incredible and generous it is to be given free content of an animated show for years?

To be given a show that is so obviously made with passion and love?

And still having the nerve to complain that its not the way how some people want or like it to..

Write it. To those who fully believe they know how things should be created, then do it yourself. Make a script and give it to them. Make a fanfic. Make an AU. Make art. MAKE WHAT EVER IT IS YOUR COMPLAINING ABOUT OR MADE YOU DISSATISFIED

Sorry about the long rant, this is in no way directed to you, been really peeved with how ungrateful people have been (getting that much free content in anything is a privilege some do not realize). Thinking its so easy to make a free show.

Anyway can't wait to see the continuation of your AU :D

Allahuakbar—THAT'S A LONG TED TALK wwwwwwwww X'D

Lmao I was not ready for a minute with how long your ask was, so of course I couldn't ignore this! wkwkwkw

Ehem.

Truuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu 100%!

I am new to this fandom but it genuinely got me a headache. Even with the recent drama "Boboiboy is more likely a fan service franchise now!" or "Why monsta always treat Boboiboy only and abandoning their supporting characters? This is why Ejen Ali is better!" and many other drama that I don't need to know in the past.

Like... Puh-lease. Don't you guys know how much it blessed that they released their show full HD on YouTube? Both TV and movie series? Released their comic on webtoon for free?

Maybe you guys didn't realize how illogical that sound for outside of... I dunno, maybe from sea countries. Like Japan with their infamous strict rules for any franchise when they promote their products.

(and with how ridiculous what had westerns entertainment corporations did to consumers, so pirating on us and Europe almost became a norm?)

Monsta I'd say is genius. They knew they cannot apply the same way with how the Japan did, and thus they find a way to make their show release without losing any money. Even me personally still find that strategy is "somewhat" illegal. But for SEA countries? I can understand why they choose this path. Because that's how The some of franchises from my country did that too to promote their products.

Buuuut does it make the corporate go impecunious?

Now that my friend, it all comes down with the quality and the general public reception themselves.

(I can give you examples buuuut it gonna be longer and might subjective since I don't have any uh... Marketing background knowledge)

Therefor Monsta creatively managed to survive that obstacle. Their shows already big enough across the SEA nations and beyond; their comics and card battle themselves are heavily sold out, and even managed to release on theater in Japan!

Aaaaaaaaand then again, anon. This is internet.

Sometimes criticism could cause endless of drama that never ends. And it's absolutely unhealthy. Uurggh..

Yet in rare occasions, consumer criticism had their own benefits. Like the infamous Gremlin Movie Sonic before Paramount had to change because of the internet. (HUGE internet criticism If you guys don't know)

It really is a gamble to take any discourse if their take was supporting and even disowning some product. Especially on the internet where you could freely critics without hearts content.

I admit I myself have my complaints but tbf, at the of the day I don't mind with what Monsta give to their product. In fact, I respect with how much they take risk to correcting their mistakes from the very first Boboiboy Series up until now.

Nobody's perfect anyway, so I highly appreciate it they way Monsta tried to please anyone.

But that's the beauty of the Fan Art. Whether in form of music, visuals, literary, and any kind of medium to ensure that franchise still has an active community with tons of new ideas to share for their franchises. Big or small.

Fan art for me is a clarification whether the franchise is acceptable to their target market or not. If no one creates it, I consider that franchise is failure and not exist.

"The difference between fanfic and a "real" novel is that fanfic is honest about its inspiration."

-Mary Robinette Kowal

"There's a time and place for everything, and I believe it’s called 'fan fiction'."

-Joss Whedon

Tho...

Why would someone would want to waste their talents for creating fan art that they didn't even like it at first?

I specifically refer to people who made fan art clearly for hate or trigger people who liked it, not for earning money(that's another story to tell)

What a pity to waste time, ya know?

Like, touch some grass dude :/

#boboiboy #boboiboy galaxy #bbb #bbbg #bbbglxs2 #Me personally view PSU is like how Miyamoto visualize his games #The epitome of PSU that started it all. Boboiboy.#Want more in depth character dynamics? There's Mechamato #Need more room for comedy? We got Pipi Papa!#I'd say PSU is pretty well balanced universe that beautifully link without leaving them behind #Heck even there's another upcoming series that yet been revealed!#Anywho—#AAAAAAAAA #I'm too embarrassed that you see my messed up AU.#Thank you very much for your encouragement :'3 #menjawab anon

8 notes · View notes

genlossneg · 10 months

Note

Oh my god I literally cannot convey to you that stumbling on this blog felt like seeing the sunlight again after being trapped underground for months. I thought I was crazy for finding fault with genloss because I have not seen any actual valid criticism anywhere and I thought I was losing my mind for not seeing the glory that is the, ‘next wave of indie horror content’.

Please.

There’s more horror in an average retail store on any given weekend than this entire series has in its three episodes.

Christ I don’t even know where to begin with this thing.

I’m not a film student but I’ve read the other film student anons’ posts and they are so incredibly right. There is so much about the series that felt hastily thrown together and I also loathe the phrase ‘intentionally bad’ when it’s something that’s been hyped up for as long as it has and yet, fell so incredibly flat. I have never been more bored, irritated, and confused watching a piece of media before, and have continued to feel this way as I watch diehard fans of Ranboo tout how great of a series it is?

Hey, Boobers- cmere, let me tell you a secret, genloss ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

It’s a lukewarm, lackluster production at best, and if I didn’t know going in that this was supposed to be Ranboo’s passion project, it literally feels like a school assignment he had only the bare interest in putting together. God this thing has no soul. It has no spark. And it hurts so much to know that this is what this great incredibly hyped-up project became, because from how they talked about it, it's obvious Ranboo loves this thing, and I wanted to love it too.

But it ain’t good. And someone should’ve told him long before now it needs massive edits, and I get it, getting hard criticism is painful and isn't fun, but if it makes your end product better, your piece of entertainment content more enjoyable for the consumer, then you gotta listen and bare it.

I’m an author and I know they do it because they love me, but whenever my editors are like ‘ayo this shit is whack wtf you talking about’ it does hurt my pride but!!!! But!!!!!!!! I go back and take a harder look at that section and sometimes I stand by what I wrote, but other times I now see what was wrong with it and make the edits. Sometimes entire concepts have to get cut to trim down the story and make it more cohesive and that also sucks, but you just tuck those ideas away for later or another project, and tbh I do not feel like anyone did this with the genloss concept.

This entire story feels like it is stapled together and there is literally no through line!! It is a random bag of ideas mashed together to form what I imagine an AI would generate if you typed in ‘mall, horror, evil cooperation’. Fuck it hurts. It hurts so much to be someone that is so passionate about storytelling and writing to see genloss get the attention it has, and for Ranboo to be praised for their ‘excellent writing skills’.

I do understand this was probably their second real attempt at writing a story for public consumption (first being his character’s arc in the dsmp), and like, nothing anyone writes on their second attempt to tell a story is gonna be great. Mine wasn’t, no writer’s is, and that’s okay I really genuinely get that, my problem is how the production was hyped up, how the budget was apparently blown on so much wasteful crap, and then how no one with experience telling stories took a look at his concept before production began.

It makes me sick to know that box cost 18k. Do you know what I, and many other small creators, could do with that kinda money?

This was a few weeks ago? Maybe last week? But Ranboo said over here on the tumbles that they were thinking about genloss in written form, IE a book, and I think I literally blacked out I got so angry. I am also writing a book (hahahaha hi it is not easy!) and I honestly don’t think it's half bad, but I have still been fighting tooth and nail to get eyes on it and nothing makes me angrier than knowing Ranboo could slap some half-baked shit into a word doc, get whatever kind of fancy printing they wanted, and sell more copies than I likely ever will.

I don’t wish anything ill on the dude, he seems like a nice person and I hope he succeeds, but jesus christ, someone needs to be real with them on their writing and story construction. TBH I think a large part of the problem is how rabid his fanbase is, so any kind of criticism gets buried under threats and just, people blowing smoke up his ass, and that is not helpful to him as a creator!! Dude wants to grow and improve, stop telling them genloss is the best thing since sliced bread!!

Let him get his feelings hurt over this, let them take that and make it their drive, let him know he can do better.

If you keep settling for mediocrity, you never push yourself to do something great.

But that’s just my two cents. Thank you for letting me word vomit in your inbox, I have been going crazy and I will likely be back <3

-the author anon

this blog is collecting anons representing all the creative aspects of gen loss like pokemon. first film student anon. now author anon.

but in all seriousness i'm glad this blog is a breath of fresh air for you <3 you're right! my first couple attempts at writing (mostly fanfiction, some original) i am very glad they do not exist online. part of writing well is being kind of really bad at it for a bit. ive taken a writing class (in college) and the entire foundation of that class was "we will write and then your classmates will give you feedback" and it made a lot of my work so much better. feedback is like. how you get good and i feel like you're right, the fanbase does drown a lot of that out (hence me making a dedicated blog!)

i hadn't heard of the gen loss book concept before this but. i can't imagine it would be super great at the current form of gen loss is in. and writing is so much more than "here's the plot" like. establishing a good setting and sense of place and making us actually connect with the protagonist and. author anon that awakened something in me

Let him get his feelings hurt over this, let them take that and make it their drive, let him know he can do better. If you keep settling for mediocrity, you never push yourself to do something great.

anyways. great thoughts! reposting that quote for those in the back :)

#ask #gen loss neg #gen loss crit

20 notes · View notes

aotopmha · 8 months

Text

I think dark/cynicism fatigue is really setting in for me when it comes to media consumption.

Why can't good triumph? Why can't faith in the good in humanity triumph?

I don't like shallow, extremely one-dimensional stories in general, either, but I also think both sides of the coin can be equally one-dimensional/poorly written.

Droning cynicism and nihilism can in my eyes be just as boring as any story subsisting on the power of hope and friendship.

Maybe I just haven't found a good 'cynical' story in a while, but I really think shooting down anyone fighting for good just to be 'realistic' and 'to ground' a story isn't the special move it seems to be treated as by many, still.

As someone at this point 'older' in fandom spaces, that stuff more often than not just feels super juvenile instead of 'breaking storytelling conventions' or 'breaking new ground'.

It so often feels like someone's first step into more complex storytelling.

And I think 'grounding' a story like this isn't necessarily the non-conformist middle finger to The Mainstream some people see it as, either.

The issue with current media isn't whether it's more lighthearted or darker, it's that it's increasingly more product than it is sincere art made by people.

I guess one way to percieve this is that lighthearted media is the culprit because it might 'appeal to a broader audience', but I think it's just that so much of it doesn't feel sincere.

We're getting the 5th or 6th Toy Story when the entire line should've ended at 2.

Comic book movies are only now falling out of fashion because Whedon speak was tiring after the 5th movie, but has become absolutely unbearable after so many stories outside of Marvel have made it their identity and it then has been written increasingly worse with each movie, too.

And truth is, it's also subjective what constitutes 'sincere' art. I simply use the storytelling intuition I've built up over the years. Some look at the credits and see whether they detect the whiff of committee in there.

Maybe I sometimes get sincerity out of pretty obvious product? And who's to say you can't have sincerety in such media? A very large portion of media is made as art as much as it is made to make money.

And even stories that pretty thoroughly foreshadow and bake their happy ending into themselves get the criticism of being 'asspully' sometimes.

The 'shunning' of happiness and chill content in stories has become super interesting to me because I think lighthearted content has been mixed up with being bad storytelling, when it truly is just storytelling within a different tone that can be done as well or as poorly as any darker story.

You can have conflict and stakes in a more lighthearted story.

Stories with good guy characters can have conflicts beyond 'jerk turns good'.

How about someone growing stronger to do good or gaining the confidence to fight for good? How about someone finding their passion or purpose?

How about a hero not really knowing what they believe in at all and finding out what they believe in during their journey?

Or how about a hero who perseveres in face of great hardship after being broken down, even?

There are so many archetypes that aren't just bad guy turning good or bad guy that sometimes does good!

And these are absolutely valid, too.

With all of these the writers simply must be (allowed to) put in the work.

I'm so tired of non-complex good guys in stories.

Make good guys complex again.

#Media analysis #Media criticism #Comic books #Movies #Films #Anime #Manga #Video Games

14 notes · View notes

cookinguptales · 8 months

Text

So I listened to The Angel of Vine, an old (fictional) mystery podcast written in the form of a true crime podcast. It's about an unsolved murder that took place in old 1950s Hollywood, the private investigator who was trying to get to the bottom of it back then, and the podcaster trying to get to the bottom of that story now.

(Well, I guess five years old... is kind of old for a fiction podcast... Their website says a sequel is planned? But the story seemed extremely self-contained...)

Anyway. I liked it. The production values were high, the voice acting very good, the story solid. I thought the mystery was kind of predictable, honestly, but that's more of a me problem, I guess. It was still fairly atmospheric and I enjoyed the ride. The ending left me with some questions, but a comfortable number, I think.

What felt strangest, though, was that it actually reminded me so much of an old /nosleep story I always enjoyed, Dead Angels. I actually went back and checked and they came out right near each other in 2018. Seems fitting.

That's always been one of the stories that stuck out to me from my time trawling /nosleep, so maybe that was part of what helped me guess where things were going. (And... yes, I'll admit that the editor in me wants to make that story perfect, but I still think the writing is lovely. Just bear with the typos.)

Some further thoughts under a cut, for those who haven't consumed either (or both) of the stories.

I think we kind of have a fascination with art and Hollywood and starlets dying in order to become immortal. It already happens, the way Hollywood, especially old Hollywood, really chewed them up and spit them out. The Marilyn Monroes, the Judy Garlands, the little girls who became women who became just as famous for their pain as their art.

So I guess it makes sense that we also look at these sacrifices the same way that we look at victims of true crime. They're celebrities, too, frozen in time like an actress in a movie, except they were frozen by death. We love a martyr, a beautiful victim, an Ophelia, and I think it's really telling that the most famous unsolved mysteries really do end up being part of Missing White Woman Syndrome, y'know?

Both of the stories I'm talking about now feel inspired by real-life cases like The Black Dahlia, but I think both stories are also interested in... y'know, the eroticized violence of it all, the way people get obsessed with glamor and pain. The way that there sometimes is a violence to the way we consume the women we love and idolize and adore, and whether it's as explicit as a serial killer using dead women as a canvas or as hands-off as Britney being driven to madness, there really is a sense that art is suffering, and certain kinds of suffering make the most beautiful art.

But... I think when people say "art is suffering" they usually mean the artist is suffering. That the art comes from that suffering. But I think both of these stories are really playing with the idea that we turn others' suffering into our art, we get obsessed with it, we consume it, and it becomes an act of love and violence.

I guess... there certainly is an element of the way that we view women in all this... There are questions brought up (especially in The Angel of Vine) about the brutality that's popular in pornography, about consent, about the way some people funnel that into consensual (or nonconsensual) kinds of othered sex acts.

There are questions here about why we seem to love women most when they're beautiful and silent, suffering and just a little bit unknown. Paintings don't talk, y'know...? Neither do dead girls.

I guess it all comes down to consumption and memory and the agony of the sublime, though. I don't know. I'm still kind of sick, so maybe I'm not making any sense.

Personally... I actually hate true crime as a genre and subculture, though I love fictional media about true crime and how it interacts with society. So I did enjoy The Angel of Vine (just like I enjoyed more lighthearted looks at a similar subculture, like American Vandal and Only Murders In The Building) and I thought that, in some ways, it was making commentary about true crime while simultaneously aping it, y'know?

Like it talked about the way a (relatively) innocent man's life was ruined by speculation. It talked about the way the victim's life became secondary to her death and to those that killed her. It talked about the very real lives that can be destroyed in the service of an obsessive search for the truth. It talked about how sometimes, murderers want to be remembered for their crimes. They want this to be how their victims are remembered forever. They want their lives to be overwritten by their deaths, and we become party to that when we consume these stories. It's all about control, it's all about the narrative, it's all about who we allow to have the final word.

I guess... in the end, it makes sense that we're really starting to see a rise in media about actresses being murdered purely to be remembered. The quiet part of Hollywood is being said out loud. We're starting to talk about the abuses of actresses more and more these days, and sometimes in terms that seem... voyeuristic, maybe, rather than supportive. It's something that I noticed and did not particularly like during the whole big #MeToo movement.

I'm not criticizing that movement, to be clear. I think it was incredibly important and there's a reason why there was this sudden outpouring of truth and support and empathy. But I also do think that the scandal itself started to become entertainment for some people, and there became a strange push for every woman to start revealing the details of her eroticized trauma in order to remain part of the conversation. Those details got eaten up, just like the details of the more famous actresses' assaults were.

It's the empathy and consumption and revictimization every time an actresses's "nudes leak." It's the empathy and consumption and revictimization of women whose sexual assaults and/or murders are detailed on true crime podcasts. It's just. It's always down to consumption and memory and whose memories matter.

It's... idk, it's Ophelia, y'know? We love a pretty dead girl, especially if we have just enough information about her to feel like we know her -- without actually feeling the trauma of knowing her, of having a loved one and losing them and having the whole world swallow them whole.

It's all just complicated when we're dealing with women who wanted to be famous, just presumably not like this. And maybe, the cultural desire to punish them for that...? "Celebrities chose this life" and all that shit that paparazzi say. "I just want the victims to be remembered." Media bullshit.

Ah. I've tired myself out again, and I'm rambling. But I do think it's interesting, and I'm gonna be thinking about these topics for a while. Live fast, die pretty, etc. Memories live forever. Manuscripts don't burn. All that stuff.

#when I'm having high-symptom days sometimes I just lie down in a dark room for a while and listen to a podcast lmao #I don't hear THAT well but this used very professional actors and I think that helped #the diction was good so I didn't miss as much as I usually do #so thanks for helping me get through A Rough One lmao #the angel of vine

13 notes · View notes

istherewifiinhell · 10 months

Text

Wifi's (and friend) Ultimate Turtle Journey: Mirage Volume 1 skip list.

Have you ever started to get into a really popular media that you know next to nothing about? And the amount of ingrained cultural knowledge and predisposed popular opinions to have about it all left you all discombobulated? Did you then decide the best way to handle that was to go through all the media in as chronological an order as possible?

Well. Hi! I (and my companion in turtledom) did that with every cartoon, movie, anime ova, touring musical production and educational VHS we could find of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But now plumb out of media of the moving picture sort, it was time to get into comics.

This is not a list trying to make you read mirage, nor will it be a "just the good plot stuff" list. Those already exist! This is list for anyone also taking a maximalist approach to enjoying art, and letting the ideas of the people who make it flow over you. I think friction in consumption of art can be really interesting. But I will try and give you context for what that friction might be, and the lines I drew about no longer thinking something was worth my time (I never skipped tho i did occasional skim >_>). SO! Lets get too it!

Mirage 1-11, and the character micros (named after each character, published in order: Raphael, Michelangelo, Donatello and Leonardo)

This is the "core text" as it were. Obviously read it. This is probably what you need if you want to get into fights on the internet too. I might recommend a pit stop to read Eastman and Laird Fugitoid, maybe after issue 4. Issue 8 is a crossover issue. You could read the micros however but read no. 9, then Leo, then 10.

#12-18 are, brace yourself. Filler. Oh the terror. I think mostly good! 12-15 all got adapted into 03 episodes. Here's the break down.

#19-21: Return to New York

#12 - A Laird turtle romp, has good character work, action.

#13 - A guest issue, but Michael Dooney's best imho, makes sense chronologically and in tone. Women's depiction in comics Advisory warning.

#14 - An Eastman turtle romp, cute Casey and April stuff, a favourite of mine.

#15 - Laird again, and adventure again. good art.

#16 - A guest issue, Mark Martin, also his strongest imho. Not very chronologically based (a time travel plot in fact) but I'd recommend this even to people who don't read mirage.

#17 - Eric Talbot, kinda of a guest issue, within its own text, non canonical, but cute. Mikey focused.

#18 - Guest issue, Mark Bodé. The plot is. Anti MSG messaging? Turtles go to China. Really truly, you can skip this.

Yes again, obviously you should read these. I like them so much. Brothers! Feelings! Murder! Its the works.

Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1-7

Probably not were they go by publication date, but for simplicity... Lighter, easy read comics, all of them were adapted into 03 btw. I say read em, I saved them up for when mainline got too vexing. But probably at least read 4 [I, monster] and 6 [Leatherhead].

#22-48. Yes, most of em. Are "the guest era". But painting this large a chunk with the same skip or dont skip brush is beyond the pale. Some of the best and worst of Mirage is in here. Lets break it down.

#22-23. Sequels to #16. Not as strong, much weirder. But if you wanted more. You've got it. Has one gag I really like, and one I really don't.

#24-26. Rich Veitch's river saga. THE frictional art of frictional art. Emotional arc for the turtles, political and spiritual messaging. Advisory Warning for depiction of an Indigenous (Of an Algonquian tribe, probably Abenaki?) character and themes of colonialism, lots of offensive language used tho also, pro land back? Mysticism abound. If you read it, lets talk!

#27 Michael Dooney, a revisit of characters from Tales of TMNT, Radical and Carnage. Now in a... spiritual battle involved in (I believe, Lakota) religion. Stuff to chew on maybe, less offensive langauge but also maybe less to say. Dooney's treatment of women hints to a pattern.

#28 Written by Stephen Murphy and with art by Jim Lawson, makes this technically canonical, and regardless. Introspective and emotional. SO FUCKING GOOD. Also an 03 episode.

#29. AC Farley, read it for the art alone. Wild plot, fun romp.

#30. Rich Veitch again, cars! the grotesque! Highway culture. Very strange, pretty fun.

#31. Mike Zuilli and Stephen Murphy. This is truly, an AU. Continued in #35-36 (Sans Murphy). Maybe interesting to check out? Weird ass hell, maybe not in a good way? The strangest Splinter and Shredder. Mysticism, ofc. 36 Does end interestingly at least.

#32 Mark Bodé again, April and a female friend in Egypt. Cursed mummies, bad outfits. Truly skipable. (Also side bar: If someone told you this is the Only issue were April is drawn as Black or ambiguous. I Disagree. Lot of artists drew her in a lot of ways)

#33. Richard Corben. Silly turtles time travel. Cute, though the art might have given me motion sickness???

#34. Rich Hedden & Tom McWeeney. This is a Parody of the TMNT. Also not very funny. Also depicts a man having delusions and the shooting himself. (As comedy. of course. and its still not funny). Extremely skippable, though despite myself, the shots were said man sees the world populated with turtle mutants are kinda nice.

#35-36. See 31.

Phew. Done. #50-62 is the City At War arc, and finale of Mirage vol. 1. Read it! And good luck skipping any of it, it's like. 5 parallel story lines across 13 issues.

#37 Rick McCollum and Bill Anderson. I. ADORE. This issue. On the record have been singing its praises. Extremely characterful of the turtles, a reptile specific spiritual journey. Sequel to a mini "Donatello: The Ring", from Turtle Soup #2.

#38-40. Hedden and McWeeney again, this time, hornier. Still not funny. SKIPPPPPP.

#41. Matt Howarth. A look into the turtles, and Splinters, dreams. Just a cute little comic.

#42. McCollum and Anderson. Pretty good, an immortal witch summons ghosts of famous people to do her bidding (kidnap the turtles!). Mild advisory for women's depictions in comics, at least their drawn cooler... I like their Renet actually.

#43. Paul Jenkins and A.C. Farley. More of that good art! Donnie in his FEELINGS. Wild premise.

#44. Rick Arthur. Sequel to "The Name is Lucindra" Turtle soup vol 2. Raph gets a female sparring partner. There's maybe some feelings involved? its fine.

#45. Dan Berger. The return of Leatherhead! Probably canonical? I like it!

#46-47. Michael Dooney. A plot thread from #9 gets picked up. The turtles time travel to feudal Japan to stop a bad guy. Doesn't get more classic that that. Dooney's depiction of women goes turbo nuclear with this tho. Renet is less garbed than very and being man handled A lot.

#48-49 You have reached normal continuity by mirage regulars again. Casey Jones has a moral quandary of vigilantism. Return of Nobody from Tales of the TMNT. The turtles say some based shit about cops.

And that's pretty much it! I'm not skip listing all the side content cause i haven't read it yet and also. If your the kinda sicko who wants to read Mirage's Gobbledygook, Grunts, Turtle Soup or Plastron Cafe... What would you need a skip list for?

Wow! Now that's really it! You did it! Catch me next time when I finally know what the fuck happened with the rest of Mirage's publishing! Or what the hell is up with image comics? Or maybe those darn adventure comics from Archie.

#some shit #turbles...#wifi blogs mirage #tmnt #tmnt mirage #btw i really cannot offer any kind of comprehensive content warning type thing for this like some ppl have for shows.#my brain cant contain that all!!! but if you wanna chat about that topic. hit me up! i do think its important.#im not in any way an expert. i cant and wont make definitive calls but yeah! tells talk about it.

8 notes · View notes

oh-yes-i-did-not · 11 months

Text

Today is the day for people not to forget that vegetarianism exists. Maybe they’re not as “morally pure” as you want them to be, only shunning meat as is, or varying degrees of animal products including or excluding milk, eggs, even fish to some, depending on what your meat avoidance is (red meat, mammals, etc), but vegetarians are still a thing and they’re here. And it’s still a very viable option for people who want to be more aware, but don’t want to throw everything they already have away for containing a small amount of milk or fish product. Like most sauces you might find in your cabinet. Fish sauce is an ingredient in a lot of Asian cuisine sauces, just fyi.

And fuck those people who go “vegan or nothing!” They’re the exact same people who go “NO PAIN NO GAIN” on you on gym, when you can’t perform to perfection. They’re impossible, they expect impossible, they don’t exist in real life and thus they lack empathy, and they lack any awareness of you as a person, living in a situation.

If you want to lessen your consumption of meat or animal products without going scorched earth on them, you can do so. And it’s okay, too. One less piece of any meat consumed is better than none. It doesn’t matter if you can’t keep up with it or lapse once in a while. You as a singular consumer don’t matter quite that much as to bring down a movement with one or two mistakes. That’s actually a lie compounded on by THE industry, trying to shift the blame away from them and it’s not quite as black and white. But if it lessens your guilt then YES, you are not responsible for industries and your lone consumption will not change anything. You just need more people on your side.

...which is where vegeterianism and not being so fucking stubborn hardline comes in. Vegans I’ve seen have done nothing to encourage doing less with meat. They just say YOU NEED TO, NOW. And sharing recipes with fellow vegans, going “oooh, aaah” don’t count.

IN fact, I don’t care who the person who got their vegan lox recipe with carrots and salt shared on a national media is, or if they deserve even more accolades than they got, I’m just saying that anyone who spray painted “go vegan!” on a side of a building did less. They did something alright, some markings on a stuff. Which mostly annoys people in general. And then they think that annoyance or emotional reaction from non-vegans means anything (oooh they feeling guilty oooooh feeling so bad oooooh) and that they did something huge.

IN FACT, anyone just quietly sharing vegan recipes that look and taste good, and maybe even ways to do traditionally meat things as vegan, have done more to their cause than any-single-motherfucker who has ever spray painted shit, or yelled about their cause online, gotten angry at strangers online for their cause, or tried to gatekeep people like vegetarians or less meat people from their cause.

...just saying o.O

#vegetarianism #pescaterianism #meat industry #also #if this feels like it's about you #idk #could be?#Have you ever talked to your non-vegan friends about the obvious guilt they must feel?#when they try to explain their life and motives to you #have you said any such explanation is just more evidence of feeling guilty?#Without ever examining how YOU come through?#that this close friend we once knew is suddenly so hard-line and saying things we would no expect #That struck YES #but not on the places they thought #on some meat-eaters guilt #but on our friendship #that all the things we've seen them say online #like you can't be feminist if you're not vegan #or that you're a literal human monster if you eat meat #or maybe you thought that was all private and no one would see?#Well bitch #go to non-algo driven site if you don't want anyone seeing that #anyways #I'm still a mixed eater trying to work towards vegeterianism maybe #Maybe I won't get there #maybe world will end before that #who knows #anygays #I'm off to making nasu dengaku #fish have probably died for that

4 notes · View notes

chicknparm · 8 months

Text

I think there’s such a thing as healthy cynicism but it’s a shame social media doesn’t really allow for such a thing. Either you’re for something or you’re against it. You’re cool and safe or you’re problematic. You’re hopepunk or you’re an edgelord.

I’ve not yet seen the Barbie movie (and am not in a rush to do so) but I believe when people say it’s extremely fun and well-made and enjoyable. Greta and that cast and crew are far too talented for it to be a bad movie. But it’s still an advertisement, and is still image laundering for a massive corporation, that everyone involved in the production, marketing, and consumption is complicit in. It’s okay, and a good thing even, to be skeptical and cynical about that. It is possible for good art to exist for nefarious reasons. That’s like, the entire Thing with all of gundam lmao.

It’s really cool that one of the biggest music acts right now is a trio of hugely talented queer women who succeeded on the strength of their songwriting, and that their music and performances are responsible for so much joy among lgbt women right now, myself included. It’s also okay to point out that this kind of thing never happens by accident, and is absolutely the latest step in a years-long marketing push by one of said group’s members for whom TS-level superstardom is obviously the goal. TS also found success through her songwriting, but it can’t be overstated that she never could’ve taken the swings that she’s taken in her career without building a massive fanbase with an absolutely deranged level of loyalty. What TS did through connecting to children through vivid, youthful, romantic songwriting and fairytale imagery, PB is doing by first making herself the ultimate Relatable pop star (esp in the earlier fake_nudes era) and now by fully embracing the Queer Joy/Kiss Your Friends vibe. That’s all cool, good for her, but it’s also okay to be cynical about the fact that these types of performances are just not possible for women who aren’t cis/white/attractive! Cool that PB and LD get to kiss each other and perform with their titties out, but 1: they are doing so while charging crazy prices to come watch them do it, 2: I would be arrested for doing that! Ditto for them making a show of performing in “Drag” in TN. I don’t doubt for a second any of their Allyship to the trans community, but the gesture itself isn’t that radical; women presenting a cartoonishly exaggerated performance of femininity surely ruffles conservative feathers, but it’s not under legal threat, there was no risk involved. It was much for effective as publicity, which was the primary intention.

It’s also very cool that the biggest video game in the world right now (and the presumptive GOTY) is an independent, (primarily) single player story driven CRPG that offers the truest role playing experience that a AAA game has offered in a decade. It is okay to be cynical about the fact that the very same people tearing into it for being Woke Propaganda also use it as a weapon to harass games journalists and developers. When a handful of devs speak with frustration about how the conditions for BG3 were impossibly perfect, and that basically no other AAA dev would be allowed the scope, freedom, time, and resources to make something like that, it of course gets twisted into “lazy game devs and journalists HATE this game because it doesn’t feed Globalist Greed.” It’s also okay to be cynical about Fandom As Identity as it pertains to this game, as we see more and more people make it to the endgame which is comparatively unpolished, unfinished, and at times genuinely broken. This has caused some blemishes on its sterling reputation, and of course people freak out. “There’s no way that anyone who isn’t trolling gives this game anything less than a 10. Maybe a 9.5 if you encountered bugs.” Something connected with people in a huge way, but that connection and widespread praise isn’t enough. It must be universal. Dissent is tantamount to violence. There’s an extra layer of cynicism I feel here too, and that’s centered around the miraculous timing of this game for WOTC. When trust in that company is at an all-time low, and there’s finally (finally!!) some momentum in getting people to try other tabletop games, in swoops BG3 reminding people “noooo don’t leave D&D behind, tieflings are so sexy haha.” Absolutely disastrous timing for indie ttrpgs!

Anyway tl;dr I wish people were more skeptical/cynical/aware of when they’re being manipulated by media and marketing, and had the cognitive capacity to recognize that something can be both a well-crafted and affecting piece of art, as well as an attempt to separate you from your money.

6 notes · View notes

undiscovered-horizon · 2 years

Note

Can i ask for a dark! Peter Parker that is super clingy?

[TW: mentions of suicide, self-harm, unhealthy relationships, involuntary drug consumption]

>>500 followers special!<<

Clingy Dark!Peter Parker

It's exam season and I'm panicking how's life going for yall

Clingy Peter is like a koala bear

Just hangs on to you and doesn't let go

Except that koala bear is completely unhinged, so more like a drop bear really

Two weeks into the relationship he was ready to get married tbh

Has he drugged you to cuddle you a little longer? Most definitely

More than once probably, rip your liver

Would deliberately hurt himself to have your attention

"Pretends" to be a danger to himself

(he already is, just tends to embellish it with very dramatic acting)

"I don't want to hurt myself when you're around"

Definitely has threatened/hinted that he would kill himself as a last resort to have you stay with him -> not necessarily in a break-up situation, even a "it's late and I should go home" situation

Fake crying/meltdown/breakdown so you hug him

"No, no, no, don't leave me!"

You were just going to the store

If you pay too much attention to someone else, even a relative, he goes through a legitimate depressive episode

If he doesn't have your undivided attention he will make up a wild story to have you pity love him

His hand is constantly on or around you

Gets fidgety and irritable when you're not around

Camps out outside the bathrooms waiting for you but only because you started a fight once about a grown man going into the women's restroom

Whatever you're doing, wherever you're going, he's coming with you

Your friends regularly point out how unhealthy that is, so Peter gets quietly angry: he can't have you believe them

He might or might not have bludgeoned some of them into a near-death state

The blood on him is because he hurt himself and he needs your attention...right?

If you manage to hang out on your own or with someone, Peter's stalking you without a doubt

If you don't text/call him back right away, he starts to genuinely panic

Scares away any man you know (the ancient art of threats, blackmailing and caving someone's face in), maybe except for a male parental figure if you have one - it would be very counter-productive to have your parents/guardians wary of him

I feel like he would easily worm his way into your mother's/female parental figure's heart with that sheepish look he has

Asks if you still love him like three times a day at least

Stalks your social media and gets upset at any mention/picture that involves someone else

Peter's thoughts would spiral if you as much as don't give him a forehead kiss first thing in the morning

For him it's an immediate sign you're probably angry or hate him and that's he's not good enough and you love someone else and-

No, you're just still sleepy and detached from reality

If you're anything but chipper he's preparing for you to confess your hatred towards him, which, let's be honest, is not going to happen anytime soon

His hugs crush bones and suffocate, Peter's like a scared toddler holding a teddy bear

Which is a pretty good analogy, really: he's terrified of you leaving him (in any sense of the word) and he's convinced that aside from you there is nothing worth living for

If you're just doing some chores around the house, he's either helping you or following you around

You could be cooking or ironing and he's just standing there, back hugging you silently

Because of his clearly unstable emotional state, you developed a habit of frequently telling him you love him and asking him if he's okay

Peter's a huge fan of that

You can barely talk to anyone without him getting upset, so he's easily alienating you from your social circles

_______

@restingbitchsblog

41 notes · View notes

spinspoon · 1 year

Text

okay, so this has been rattling around in my brain for a while, so don't mind me getting my thoughts out for a moment

as someone who struggles with motivation and just getting the motivation to do things on a daily basis, this is something ive specifically noticed for me

in summary: time is a deceptive little thing.

okay, lemme explain.

so, my struggle is often i won't end up getting things done, because i'll look at the time and be like "oh, well, can't do that now because i dont have enough time/it's too time consuming to start now", when in reality ive begun to realize that most of the time, that isn't really the case. in reality, ive unconsciously conditioned myself to believe that through constant media consumption.

the way that media is created (and here, for sake of clarification, i'm mostly referring to online media) is specifically in a way that is (generally) very low in terms of actual energy consumption, and supposed to keep your brain distracted; and when your brain is distracted, it's much easier to lose track of the time. for example, if you're playing a video game, 30 minutes might feel more like 5 minutes because your brain isn't focusing on the time, it's focusing on the game and all the stimulation and stuff that comes with interacting with it.

let me clarify right now: im not saying media itself or consuming media is a bad thing, obviously. pretty much far from it (assuming you're making sure to moderate what you consume on a daily basis)

but because some types of media consumption for me are such low energy (and don't really take a lot of thinking) when my depression was much worse a couple of years ago (before i realized that's what i was experiencing) i let myself fall into an unhealthy habit of spending too much time consuming media. and because of that, my sense of time has been completely warped.

ive realized that ive completely forgotten how much time just 1 hour really is. heck, how long even 30 minutes is! whenever i do end up doing something productive, I'll end up looking at the time afterward and being like "wait, that only took me 15 minutes??"

i think another reason for this is just because of how fast-paced modern society is today, and how pressured society makes people feel about everything absolutely having to be going at a constant, continuous rate (but that's a conversation for a different time, lol)

so, in conclusion, i just want to say, mostly for myself but for whoever this might also help: if you aren't doing things because you feel like you don't have enough time for it, try and do even little things and maybe even time yourself just to see how much time it actually takes. and it's okay to start things that you might not be able to finish in that same day! as somebody who feels like they have to sit down and do everything in one sitting, this has been really hard to teach myself, but im working on getting there!

naturally, everybody will have some things that tend to eat up the day (school, work, etc.) and i totally get sometimes (or a lot of the times) just physically or mentally not having enough energy is a struggle. but don't limit yourself to not doing things because you don't feel like you have time! slow down, enjoy little things, don't let you convince yourself that just because you feel like you don't have time to do anything, doesn't mean that doing nothing at all is better than trying to use the time you have! i know that it's easier to say then to do, but if you can get into the habit of reminding yourself just how much real time you have, it really genuinely helps!

keep in mind that this is just my experience and this is just what i know has been working for me, but i thought it was worth sharing in case this reaches anyone else who has similar experiences :]

anyway, that's all, if you made it to the end of this thanks for entertaining whatever the heck is going on inside my head 💪💪

#spinspoon speaks #i just really needed to get this out of my head and down somewhere

3 notes · View notes

gothprentiss · 2 years

Text

people keep talking about how avatar had no cultural impact which i think is largely just a result of how media production and consumption are weirdly stratified, so that the fact that most people don't think about avatar regularly somehow outweighs the way that avatar was surely a bellwether for groaningly long cgi-heavy blockbusters, but that's just a side point. the main point is that every time i see that claim i'm like fuck me i may truly be the person who experienced avatar the most.

let me explain.

avatar 1 is the movie i have seen the most in my life. not by choice but because my dad is the dad variant which is moth-to-flame obsessed with the Phenomenon Of Technology and had a lobe of his brain dedicated to wanting to see avatar before the movie was even a twinkle in james cameron's beady eye. so when it came out on dvd in the late spring of 2010, my dad rented it from the library and set about to watch it, with his family.

one relevant fact here is that i grew up without any tv access. cable, network, whatever-- i literally don't know what it is we didn't have. the library dvd rentals were my closest brush with new and ongoing media that wasn't an extremely paltry collection of disney videos and focus on the family style christian children's movies. so whatever we got from the library i was watching, 100%, regardless of how much it sucked or how impenetrable it was. this despite the fact that, second relevant fact here, i'd already seen avatar-- my best friend and i saw it in theaters in 3d and thought it was dope or whatever, we were 13, the bit where everyone's linking up their hair tentacles was kind of weird, the big cat was metal, everyone was roasting it for being a rip off of pocahontas but with big space dinosaurs. in other words, i was ready to be like, apparently, everyone else on this god damn planet who saw it once and was like yeah, sure, whatever, and moved on with their lives.

but i've already told you how this ends, which is not with me getting to be normal.

the central conflict of this already too long story is that my mother's sleep schedule adjusts whenever she's sat down in front of a tv-- something about the blue light sets her on a 30 minute sleep timer. obviously this was a problem for a 2.5 hour movie. over the course of a week we managed to wrangle her sleep timer so that she made it about 45 minutes to an hour, before she'd promptly fall asleep and snore at a decibel level that implied conscious maliciousness.

my dad was undaunted! we rewatched the beginning over and over, i'd say about ten times over two weeks, until finally we just gave up on her and powered through the whole thing.

now, you might be saying, that's not that many times, i've watched my favorite movie well over ten times, maybe you just lack commitment to film, and i am so glad to tell you this story does not end here. my mother was also undaunted! and my dad had hyped up the movie to such an extent-- recall, again, he's a technology dad, and this was also a welcome and blessed break in the middle of a deeply cursed phase where he listened to french electronica and LMFAO for months on end-- that she was just as determined to see it to its close as he'd been.

so we resumed our lurching progress through the movie, again kneecapped by my mother's sleep schedule. my father and i had gotten out of the human colonies on pandora into the cgi marvels of na'vi land, but we were grounded again. i had suggested, back in the aught watchcount, that we could simply make note of where we'd stopped watching and resume there the next night, but my dad's avatar hype train had a weird purism car and he insisted that the True Experience was watching it beginning to end. i considered abandoning ship at this point, but i wasn't allowed to close my door and my parents watch movies at astounding volumes, so it wasn't like i was going to not be experiencing the movie.

this went on for weeks. i believe the library charged $2/day for new movie rentals, and capped their rentals at a week, no doubt in an effort to disincentivize this precise kind of rat brained behavior. but freezing my dad's library account until he returned the dvd wasn't going to have any meaningful impact: there was no space to want other dvds or books during the great avatar consumption. i believe we genuinely had the dvd out for a whole month, and during that time had it on every night that my parents weren't working late. if you remember the post about the kid who could just close their eyes and "play shrek" because they'd seen it so much, there was a period of my middle school life where i could do that with the first half to two thirds of avatar. the bit where sigourney weaver goes "hey marine, catch!" to jake sully is actually embedded in my mind because it was typically when my mother's deviated septum kicked up a fuss.

this isn't a great story, you know, it's just something that happened. i think we genuinely watched avatar, at least the first half, over twenty times, but it never occurred to me to keep count. long-term, somehow this month-long avatar fugue state didn't work as some sort of contemporary variation on the clockwork orange ludovico technique. my dad went back to tecktonik, my mother's sleep schedule regularized, and we finally could use the library again. i'd nearly forgotten about it (the Avatar Effect) until we started getting news stories about the sequels a couple of years ago, which i naturally sent to my dad. it turns out he does not remember his brief and consuming obsession with avatar, and thought i was just a fan of the movie. he is going through life without the weird sensation of being kicked in the brain by every avatar fact he encounters, such as the fact that the giant avatar shaman animatronic at disneyworld is the most expensive animatronic they've ever done and is yet another Feat of Technology, or how na'vi is an actual created language, or how there are FOUR avatar sequels slated, ensuring that the 2020s will be marked by the consistent presence of james cameron's giant blue space kitty movie and ever-evolving heights of discourse. his memory of 2010 is smooth and serene and unmarked by the single greatest film incident of my entire life.

#sorry this is long i just feel INSANE every time i recall this fact #me? i'm avatar georg

4 notes · View notes

preciousmomentsfigurine · 2 years

Text

dude i’m so sad about culture today idk why maybe it’s bc i finally got batteries for my boombox and went cassette/cd shopping yesterday and have thus been listening to physical music exclusively, and it’s making me super nostalgic.

idk i know i’m becoming a shaking-fist-in-the-sky millennial just as the boomers did to us but it doesn’t even have anything to do with the younger generation, who i clown on bc i’m getting old but i have great respect for in many ways (fierce albeit often misguided sense of justice, highly creative and intuitive, much kinder and more empathetic, nonconformist).

my problem is with the powers that be that are manipulating cultural production more than ever before through incredibly sinister means, which we’ve just accepted...

and i do believe that because the younger gen has not seen the evolution of social media from the beginning, they are a bit (understandably) naive to the evils of it? the corporate supergiants know this and are blatantly exploiting it, manipulating narratives, feeding us content that targets our specific weaknesses and struggles for profit, generally just being the sole deciders of culture itself. and it’s not our fault as consumers of course.

but i also fear that there is no turning back from it all - surveillance and data mining, industry planting, the increasing bombardment of what are often disguised advertisements, the powerlessness and resulting decay of authenticity/innovation/self expression on behalf of the public despite our efforts. we no longer have any control over what we consume. the culture industries have always been evil, but beginning with facebook, they have become much much smarter and have us all in a complete vice.

i’m approaching my saturn return and more than ever before am experiencing feelings of grief in many senses, i’m uncovering lost memories, i’m diving into my traumas on purpose bc i’m desperate to finally heal - it’s necessary at this point of my life, now that my identity is becoming more solidified.

and i guess that grief includes the detachment i’m so desperately fighting from my roots, what i’ve known and loved, and i guess if i’m being honest with myself, what and how i’ve consumed. i’m mainly thinking about music here, and other media too, but my number one love in this life is music and social media has absolutely ruined what little integrity the music industry once had. the consumption of music has lost much of its intimacy for me, because i know the tangible harms of streaming, algorithms, and so on, and how i’m actively lining the pockets of billionaires at the expense of not only myself but the artists i cherish.

anywho, this became a really tangential rant, but damn, the closer i get to 30, the more disconnection and yearning i experience. this is a painful time for me generally speaking, very introspective. and thank god i now have the tools to cope with it all, i know who i am, my feet are mostly firmly planted to solid ground. to end on a positive note...

and i always have my memories, and i always have my cassettes and cds and artifacts from a time when we could express ourselves for expression’s sake.

12 notes · View notes

recurring-polynya · 2 years

Text

Writing/Art Update 9/23/2022

I read a post a while ago when you don’t exactly have writer’s block, but you do have writer’s traffic jam, where you write stuff, like, 1 sentence at a time, and that’s where I am right now, both on the writing and on the art front.

I know it doesn’t seem like it sometimes, but Heart is a Muscle is my most important and beloved story, and I do try to work on it when I feel like. I think I mentioned last time that I was feeling itchy for it, so I went ahead and wrote a particular scene that I was thinking about, which rang up 2261 words (bringing the whole thing up to 7495...I’m not very far along). I feel like this one is gonna a real Polynya Deep Cut, in the sense that it relies on so many of my arcane headcanons and extremely niche dynamics that people are going to have to actually read the rest of the series to find out what’s going on, but maybe that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Anyway, I wrote the bit I meant to write and then I got back to the Tattoo Artist AU, and wrote 1008 words of the next chapter. Hrnnngh, it felt like so much more while I was actually writing it, probably because it’s mostly about Rukia’s car, and I had to watch a bunch of videos and read a bunch of Lotus forum posts. I’ve been trying not to lose steam on this one, but I am very definitely losing steam. On the other hand, I lost steam on it once, like, back in March, and then when I picked it up again in July or so, it was very easy to continue, so maybe I need to take a break. I don’t really know. I know where the rest of the fanfic is going and it’s not that complicated of a thing, and I’d really like to get through to the end, but on the other hand, I would also like to enjoy writing it, instead of just plowing through for the sake of getting done, y’know?

I *do* know that there is a sort of Welcome Back, Bleach event going on in a few weeks that I’d really like to participate in, so maybe that will be enough of a break. It’s been a bit since I did any short fiction, which is always a bit like performance art, where I always have this deep fear that I’m gonna open prompts or something and then absolutely blow it. This has never actually happened, but I have certainly had events that went better than others.

My art project is still... on-going. I think I am through the most arduous and time-consuming part of it, but it’ll still be a while before it’s ready for private consumption. I colored part of it and decided I hated it, so I need to try and figure out what went wrong there. Usually that happens with the line art, but I think the lineart came out pretty good, so maybe that’s an improvement?

That’s been my week! I finished Nona, too. There’s Bake-Off tonight, and I’m looking forward to Spy x Family returning and then Bleach right after that. I honestly cannot express how nice it is to have new media available to consume (me 🤝 SecUnit), but it’s doing wonders for my mental health right now (even if it is tanking my writing productivity.... 3269 for the week...yuck. At least it’s better than the 1500 of last week.)

#writing update #art update

5 notes · View notes

randomvarious · 2 years

Photo

Today’s mix:

The Masters Series Part Two: Ibiza by Deep Dish 2000 Progressive House / Deep House

Y'know, I'm about to do some big generalizing here, but I don't think I really much care for this whole globetrotting DJ-big room superclub-progressive house scene that really started to sprout up near the turn of the millennium. There's just something so cheap and superficial and inauthentic about it all; like a big manufactured industry was constructed and made to capitalize off of club culture, which was originally a thing that grew organically in each city. It all sorta seems to have been streamlined and sanitized and corporatized by money-hungry vultures who really want to push these big DJ sets.

And I wouldn't care all that much about all that if the music was good or fun, because as a nostalgia junkie, I know that so much of the music that I loved in my childhood was actually more or less manufactured in a lab for mass consumption (just skim through radio business trade magazines from the 90s and you'll see how transparently gross the whole process is). But this brand of "global" progressive house music just seems to lack so much soul and ingenuity. Like, I feel like a big draw to this stuff is the fact that producers were generating very unique sounds with their equipment and software. But then you actually have to do something moderately interesting with that unique sound instead of just merely looping it over a pumping backbeat. Again, I'm generalizing here, because there's a slew of nifty progressive house tunes out there, but so much of it feels so uninspired, uncreative, and disposable. Like, cool, you crafted a piece of sound that doesn't really sound like anything else; now show us that you can actually craft a song that builds to something complex and dope that incorporates that sound instead of making this particularly novel sound the focal point of your production.

Anyways, this is a double-disc mix from the prolific Iranian remix and DJ duo of Deep Dish. And if you're at all into electronic dance music from the ~mid-90s through ~early aughts, then you've doubtlessly heard some of their work before. Discogs currently credits them with having made a whopping total of 834 remixes to their name 🤯.

And a few of those appear on here, most notably their own closer to disc 1, a remix of Gabrielle's "Rise," which, despite this mix having the name Ibiza on it, is one of the only tunes within these two CDs to actually have that warm, trademarked Ibizan sound. But there's a small handful of other cool tunes on here too, like Futureshock's remix of Moby's "Porcelain," which abruptly chops off pieces of the original's iconically deep and heavy strings and lays a house beat under it. And Loophole's "Feet" features this bottom layer of a droning, ringing, unidentifiable, continuous sample underneath its pounding percussion.

And I should also mention that although I don't dig much of this selection, the transitions are absolutely flawless. Definitely digitized, but they really flow like water, so much so, that if you're not staring at your media player while the mix is playing, you won't be able to gauge exactly when the next song has begun and the last one ended.

But, yeah, I feel like as a general rule, if you come across a DJ mix that has the name of a big city on it, like [insert DJ name here]: Tokyo or Madrid, etc....might be best to avoid it? Maybe not, I don't know. Gonna test this theory out a little bit in the nearish future though. Got a bunch of those Global Underground mixes in the offing.

Listen to CD1 here. Listen to CD2 here.

Highlights:

CD1:

Sven Väth - "Barbarella (Deep Dish Armageddon Breakdown Mix)" / Junior O - "I Am The Vibe (Accapella)" PQM Featuring Cica - "The Flying Song (Markus Schulz Vocal Mix)" Pascal Vegas - "I Know You Like It (Raw Fuzz Mix)" Gabrielle - "Rise (Deep Dish Hi-Rise Dub / Remix)"

CD2:

Yellow Sox - "Flim Flam (Smith & Selway Mix)" Moby - "Porcelain (Futureshock Instrumental)" Stanny Franssen - "Shape Shifting Sky Beats" Loophole - "Feet"

5 notes · View notes

cookinguptales · 2 years

Note

I’m so glad we will officially get the new episode tonight. The week between episode 6 & 7 was no fun at all. Usually I looove seeing all the fanart and reading all the different thoughts in between episodes. But this time I tried to stay away from everything in fear of getting spoiled. ☹️ Stupid leak.

Yeah. And the fact that we may or may not have had a leak of parts of 9&10 makes you worried to look anywhere. I wish I at least knew if there was a real leak or not so I'd know how careful to be.

It's so bizarre. I've never been in a fandom where the leaks were this bad. I've never experienced anything like it. It makes me feel so bad for the creators. I don't think a lot of people understand how psychologically taxing it is when your work leaks. Some of that is because it can materially affect your career... Like even if someone is gonna watch/rewatch later, those same-day numbers are crucial. If even one person puts off watching the official release for a day or two because there's less urgency, that's starting to fuck up numbers.

I mean, I work in publishing, not tv, but I've seen authors get royally screwed because their book release was fucked up. Leaks or booksellers putting it on the shelf too early or people from one country buying it from another country with a different release date... Often the consumption numbers are monitored during a very specific period and if superfans are obtaining the media outside of that period, it won't be counted. (See: tv ratings, first-day streaming numbers, social media engagement numbers during premieres, presales, bestseller lists, etc.) And then if those numbers aren't reflecting the reality of how much is being consumed, it doesn't really matter. Those are still the numbers that are going to be used for negotiating contracts in the future.

Plus, like... it's just emotionally taxing to see your work leaked. Maybe only part of it leaked and it makes your work look bad and you can't adequately defend it without spoiling everything or breaking an NDA. Maybe it's leaked in a form that isn't so great (like a low quality video, an unedited draft, etc.) and you hate that this will be people's crucial first impression. But really, the worst part is no longer knowing who to trust. I know a fairly big-time author who had a trusted friend read over one of her books to edit it... then found out her friend had passed that unedited draft around to a bunch of her friends. She realized that her friend didn't respect her or her livelihood and mostly just wanted bragging rights. Now she's extremely wary about making new friends or asking for help with her manuscripts, and it's honestly really sad.

I imagine it'd be even worse if you're working on a production with so many moving parts. Do you trust your fellow actors? Fellow writers? The editors? The people working in your office? The friends who come in your house? I can't imagine the kind of tension you'd be working under when you know that leaks just keep getting out and you don't know where they're coming from. : /

And then, y'know, people are like "well, if I watch it same-day as well, that's not hurting anything, right?" but people wouldn't post leaks if other people didn't watch them, and creating demand for that kind of thing is... bad.

Like I don't like leaks from a spoiler standpoint, sure, but you start to gain a greater appreciation for how bad a leak can be when you're comforting an author crying at their kitchen table because their book release got fucked and they have contract negotiations this year...

tbh, I don't understand the mentality behind leaks at all. I have access to a lot of media often years before it comes out (between my editing work and also the paid tv/movie focus groups I often do) and I can't imagine leaking it. I guard the privacy of my clients pretty zealously. No saving unpublished manuscripts to the cloud, no offering identifying info while I'm working, etc. It's actually something I find kind of stressful, the idea that I could accidentally ruin someone else's livelihood if I'm not careful enough... The idea of doing it on purpose or through carelessness makes me cringe...

And then if I did do something by accident, like those WWDITS auditions saved with the wrong privacy settings, the idea of people finding that fuck-up and passing it around instead of letting me know so I could take it down... Like damn, when I think about the people who may never work in this industry again because people just wanted to find info on their favorite show faster... Genuinely kind of upsetting.

That said, the constant leaks, the way that no one secured the usernames for characters used onscreen (which allowed for the Colin's YT hoax), etc. have me like. Bro, who is in charge here? Y'all have a fandom now and you're still acting like a baby show on your first season. They really probably need to hire someone for this.

#tbh I felt kind of bad about the gentle ribbing about the Colin CGI fuckup in the trailer this week #after it was taken down #genuinely hope no one got in trouble over that one #wwdits #replies #wwdits s4 spoilers

21 notes · View notes