I know it's unfair vilification and stuff but it's also a lot of fun to see old media and stuff where people were SO scared of big animals like lions, sharks, crocodiles and wolves were fully expected to just come and eat you the moment you stepped into their territory. In older media we also made that assumption about gorillas and in still older we thought it'd be whales. But some animals that will actually fuck you up got left behind. Boars will kill you and eat you. They're way more likely to do so than any of those other things actually. Hippos, obviously, got off like bandits always being depicted as cute and dopey. And then there's the squids. Not giant kraken size squids. The eight foot squids that hunt in packs and will fuck you up if you fall in the water at night. I can't BELIEVE people slept on that. It's like all they cared about were the huge deep sea ones we never see. The medium size wolf pack squids were right there.

Oh some of you don't know about the squids. I talked about them in another thread that went kinda viral somewhere or other but one of the reasons you should not swim in the open ocean at night in many parts of the world is that the water starts teeming with these:

And as you can see it is not like instant death, they too are just animals and they are often just gently curious about the presence of humans! But people who study and dive with sharks will tell you you're safe as long as you stay calm and know what you're doing. The world's leading professional night divers and experts on these squids, specifically??? Stress in every interview and article and paper they write in that you simply do not fuck around with these squids. They know what they're doing and they still all have at least one story of being attacked, in some cases having to be hospitalized. Considering just how rarely anybody puts themselves in the pitch dark nighttime ocean on purpose, let alone during a squid feeding frenzy, it sounds like they're quite a bit more likely to consider you potential food than other marine predators. We also don't know how many fatal attacks might have ever happened, because what humboldt squid like to do with large prey is just drag it away into the darkness forever. The two worst attacks ever proven involved two or three squid at a time latching on to a diver (in BOTH cases they were professionals and knew the risk!) and jetting straight downward with enough force that both divers suffered injury from the sudden pressure change alone, including burst eardrums, nearly passed out and they probably would have died if they hadn't broken free. In general, people who die drowning in the dark open ocean are either never found, or they're found in pieces picked over by enough scavengers that the precise cause of death can only be narrowed down to "the sea." But now you know ONE of "the sea's" possible murder weapons :)

There's a short section on Humboldt squid in Wikipedia's entry for Cephalopod attacks on humans:

And if you can get past some of Animal Planet's hokey presentation style, this video includes a bit of interview with one of those professional experts who still got nearly squidded from existence:

There is of course some debate about all this, with some arguing that all proven documented attacks occurred on people with reflective diving equipment, which they say the squid must have mistaken for the shine of fish. However, there are lots and lots of people who have to fish around these squids to survive, who do not have access to that kind of equipment, and also have a consensus that if you fall in the water when big squids are out hunting you might disappear without a trace or perhaps just get your head bitten open. With many modern science guys agreeing with this sentiment, this is one case where the "they're just misunderstood sea friends" crowd is kind of outnumbered. The sea at night is theirs and not ours is all. It's not ours during the day either but since we are neither marine nor nocturnal animals we are double fools in the eyes of the squids, which by the way are these eyes:

No for real:

Absolutely! Also, the Humboldt squid will hunt in packs, sometimes with one flashing brightly to draw attention while the others approach in near unseeable camoflage!

Beautiful footage of the nefarious sea demons also :)

Also because I can't reblog every addition together:

Okay where's the other 1199

I absolutely adore Humboldt squid. I saw a doc once where a scientist was cage diving to study them, and one of the squid squeezed it's entire massive body through the cage bars, bit the guy and squeezed right back out.

Why isnt this an animal that's already long gone viral like honey badgers once did. This is the animal that actually gives no fucks. People really are just that obsessed with bigger squids I guess? But the bigger ones frankly come across as big softies in comparison. One big sea monster can never be as intimidating as a thousand coordinated man sized sea monsters.

This is why I thought that if mermaids had a cultural equivalent to lycanthropy it'd be weresquids. Fun fact nocturnal marine life increases activity on the brightest nights ie the full moon.

Reading A Song of Ice and Fire: A Clash of Kings After Book Report

So yeah, I think I liked this one better than AGOT? Not that A Game of Thrones wasn't good--it definitely was--but I think George found a little more of his grove with this one. Also, I didn't have any adolescent reading trauma associations with it the way I did with AGOT, which helped.

Also, zero percent of this book took place in my number one least favorite location in Westeros, the Eyrie, so I have to give George props for that as well. Thank you, George. I know you're going to make me go back later because I'm spoiled from fanfiction, but the reprieve is appreciated.

Anyway, I promised another set of commentary on the POVs, so let's go.

Chagrin is when you reread a post you wrote well over a week ago and realize that you wrote the wrong word in a way that completely contradicts what you actually meant.

I've since edited to fix it but for the record I was sad to see Rickon go, not good.

Can't sleep so I'm gonna talk about Akane Tendo's reputation among fans. It's no secret I'm an Akane fan, and I'm glad that the fandom seems to be kinder to her today than in the past. In light of this, I'd like to address some of the common arguments people make or used to make against her.

For reference, a significant chunk of the humor in Ranma 1/2 involves Ranma, often intentionally, pissing Akane off, to the point that she hits him really, really hard. This is a pretty common comedic trope in shonen anime prior to like...I wanna say the 2010s? (I never watched Naruto since it looked bad but I am pretty sure that's Sakura and Naruto's dynamic.) Anyways, while I joined the fandom recently, I have learned that when the show came over to America in the early 90s, Akane was SUPER controversial for treating Ranma like this, with her critics calling her a violent domestic abuser and misandrist, and her reputation has only really recovered recently.

Now, if the "girl character beats up boy character in fit of rage" trope is something that isn't your taste in comedy, then it's not your taste in comedy. However, it's important to keep in mind qualifiers for Akane's behavior. Akane at the start of the series has been harassed by boys at her school who want to beat her up and force her to date them, leading to her having a justifiably poor perception of men and boys. Her hating boys and seeing the worst in them is very different from a man hating women due to patriarchal expectations, and even then she treats boys who are nice to her like Ryoga well.

Honestly, the only area where her dislike of boys gets kinda like morally problematic in my view is if you interpret Ranma as a trans girl: while I joked in an earlier post that Akane is a TERF, one could argue that, albeit unintentionally, Akane's negative reaction to seeing Ranma naked in her bathtub (even if accidentally) and then calling him/her a pervert plays on transphobic rhetoric against letting trans women use the women's restrooms like we're supposed to. (Humorously, most of the people mad at Akane seem to be, ah...not exactly fond of trans!Ranma headcanons, but I digress.) If other trans girls or our allies don't find the slapstick funny for that reason, fair enough, but I don't feel bothered by it given how most of the time Ranma gets hit it's for being legitimately rude and again the violence is very unrealistic.

Admittedly, if Ranma 1/2 had a more serious tone and grounded level of violence, Akane hitting Ranma would be abusive. But in the series, martial artists can walk off stuff like being crushed by a boulder, so Akane beating Ranma up by kicking him/her 50 feet into the sky because she thought he/she was trying to feel her up is not so much like domestic abuse and more akin to a wife giving her husband a light dope slap. Remember, much of the violence in this series is basically just that of a Tom and Jerry cartoon, albeit with an early Dragon Ball aesthetic. Furthermore, Ranma - as much as I love him/her as a character - is usually the instigator, with the wiki even having a list of the cruel nicknames he/she gives her, so it's not as if her actions are unwarranted:

There is, per some people, a gendered component to this discussion, that if the genders were flipped, this wouldn't be funny since Ranma doesn't hit Akane. Now, firstly, if you're a man and a 35-year-old anime not having a boy beat up a girl enough is your worst experience with "sexism", well...get over it. Secondly, in terms of wider media, men commit violence against women that is framed for laughs all the time (ex.: Miroku in Inuyasha, another Rumiko Takahashi series, is a male character where his running gag involves him groping women, which is a more realistic form of violence than anything Akane dishes out), so the notion that it's only women who hurt men in media for laughs is untrue. Thirdly, the notion that hitting Ranma is viewed as okay because "he's a boy" is dubious since he does canonically turn into a girl and Akane hits Ranma regardless of gende, and despite his claims to the contrary he/she doesn't really hate being a girl as much as he/she claims. As a concession, I will note that especially in the past some writers can be reluctant to show slapstick against women, but this is more due to internalized misogyny and viewing women as weak and needing protection. Personally, even assuming that Akane was a boy and Ranma was wholly a girl, I'd have no problem with the slapstick since it's clearly goofy and unrealistic.

Anyways, I'd like to conclude by saying (1) I am glad that I joined the fandom at a time when Akane is being perceived more and more fairly as a flawed but generally pretty nice and hilarious character who has a good deal of pathos despite the clearly slapstick-y nature of the series, and (2) thanks for reading this long, very sincere post.

One of the biggest shocks of my adult life was realizing that there are a depressingly high number of people out there who still legitimately believe in the divine right of kings, and in fact who think that it is the ideal form of government.

Another shock was realizing just how many modern conspiracy theories stem from the absolute terror that gripped European nobility after the French realized that kings are, in fact, bullshit and had a revolution.

You can trace the line right directly through to the problems we still have today. If you go look at some libertarian and conservative sites, you will find that they are LITERALLY STILL SALTY ABOUT THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

The one thing I can give them some small pass on: parts of the French Revolution were absolutely bullshit and insane. It turns out you don't have to be nobility or royalty to be a shit ruler.

On the plus side, Robespierre and St Just both got the same death they handed out to so many.

Oh totally, being a shitty authoritarian douchebag is not confined to noble or royal folks by any means.

But the absolute reactionary panic at the idea of ideas like 'maybe we should get to elect leaders' is basically the whole reason every nation in Europe immediately declared war on France, which paved the way for the rise of Napoleon and the deaths of hundreds of thousands. And, can't stress enough, SO FUCKING MUCH antisemitic violence.

The “modern” conservative movement (meaning post-Enlightenment) ideologically does stem from the French Revolution. And those thinkers liked Edmund Burke are in direct lineage with those of the Marginal Revolution (capitalist economists and philosophers like Hayeck) which are the forebearers of Sowell and the “Chicago School.” Who are, themselves, direct influences on modern neo cons and the Jordan Peterson types.

The revulsion to the rise of democracy in Europe, and the subsequent fall of much of Europe’s monarchies in the 18th and 19th centuries, is still the bedrock of conservative thought. None of them have ever hidden it, either.

Yeah I came to this realization myself when doing a deep dive on the Chicago School and tracing their philosophical influences back.

Once you realize it, it's impossible NOT to see it CONSTANTLY in modern geopolitics.

What worries me most about the MAGA thing is… theyre wanting a King. That's what it is. They believe in the Divine Right of "chosen by gawd" DT to be a Dictator- a KING.

I'm with Sam Vimes on this one. No Kings. No Masters. If there's one sole thing you'd think Americans could agree on… But no. They want a KING.

Absolutely, and it's why a lot of people on the left...or even in the center...seem baffled by them.

What a lot don't get is that yes, these people WANT a king. They actively dislike the liberal values of democracy and equality. They don't care about the constitution except as a thing that gets in their way.

how to explain to non-americans that the better call saul ads aren’t exaggerated for comedic effect they are super normie

Morgan & Morgan. For the people.

Fieger Law: All We Do Is Win

What do you think he does

How you know you’re in the great state of Alabama

I don't have a picture, but our area is flooded with a dude holding a comedically large hammer and looking to sue the shit out of any truckers that have injured you.

THE TEXAS HAMMER

Alexander Shunnarah is such a big meme in Alabama that people got this man to attend anime conventions multiple years in a row as a special guest that furries and cosplayers can take pictures with and get autographs from. He's on nearly Every billboard in the state.

don't forget these jungle law billboards i have to pass every day

that doesn't even scratch the surface there are so so many of them

I remember my friends and I laughing our asses off when we saw this billboard.

A significant chunk of the time I spent with @coffee-mage-sans-caffeine and @medicationmambo in Tampa was in fact dedicated to scanning the horizon for new personal injury lawyer ads so I could demonstrate how very real they were.

Anyway have my favorite from Austin: the Attorney That Rocks.

Sometimes now I see these and I think of @medicationmambo and I take a picture, which is how I came to snap a photo of this very Minnesotan variant the other day:

Here in IL, we have the Hat Man and Hairpiece

Hat Man is literally never seen without his hat. He goes on TV with the hat. He gives money to teachers with the hat. I supposed if you take enough benadryl, he shows up at your house with the hat.

In retrospect, four years later, I feel like the Isabel Fall incident was just the biggest ignored cautionary tale modern fandom spaces have ever had. Yes, it wasn't limited to fandom, it was also a professional author/booktok type argument, but it had a lot of crossover.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: a writer, whether fan or pro, publishes a work. If one were to judge a book by its cover, something we are all taught in Kindergarten shouldn't happen but has a way of occurring regardless, one might find that there was something that seemed deeply problematic about this work. Maybe the title or summary alluded to something Wrong happening, or maybe the tags indicated there was problematic kinks or relationships. And that meant the story was Bad. So, a group of people takes to the Twittersphere to inform everyone who will listen why the work, and therefore the author, are Bad. The author, receiving an avalanche of abuse and harassment, deactivates their account, and checks into a mental health facility for monitoring for suicidal ideation. They never return to their writing space, and the harassers get a slap on the wrist (if that- usually they get praise and high-fives all around) and start waiting for their next victim to transgress.

Sounds awful familiar, doesn't it?

Isabel Fall's case, though, was even more extreme for many reasons. See, she made the terrible mistake of using a transphobic meme as the genesis to actually explore issues of gender identity.

More specifically, she used the phrase "I sexually identify as an attack helicopter" to examine how marginalized identities, when they become more accepted, become nothing more than a tool for the military-industrial complex to rebrand itself as a more personable and inclusive atrocity; a chance to pursue praise for bombing brown children while being progressive, because queer people, too, can help blow up brown children now! It also contained an examination of identity and how queerness is intrinsic to a person, etc.

But... well, if harassers ever bothered to read the things they critique, we wouldn't be here, would we? So instead, they called Isabel a transphobic monster for the title alone, even starting a misinformation campaign to claim she was, in fact, a cis male nazi using a fake identity to psyop the queer community.

A few days later, after days of horrific abuse and harassment, Isabel requested that Clarkesworld magazine pull the story. She checked in to a psych ward with suicidal thoughts. That wasn't all, though; the harassment was so bad that she was forced to out herself as trans to defend against the claims.

Only... we know this type of person, the fandom harassers, don't we? You know where this is going. Outing herself did nothing to stop the harassment. No one was willing to read the book, much less examine how her sexuality and gender might have influenced her when writing it.

So some time later, Isabel deleted her social media. She is still alive, but "Isabel Fall" is not- because the harassment was so bad that Isabel detransitioned/closeted herself, too traumatized to continue living her authentic life.

Supposed trans allies were so outraged at a fictional portrayal of transness, written by a trans woman, that they harassed a real life trans woman into detransitioning.

It's heartbreakingly familiar, isn't it? Many of us in fandom communities have been in Isabel's shoes, even if the outcome wasn't so extreme (or in some cases, when it truly was). Most especially, many of us, as marginalized writers speaking from our own experiences in some way, have found that others did not enjoy our framework for examining these things, and hurt us, members of those identities, in defense of "the community" as a nebulous undefined entity.

There's a quote that was posted in a news writeup about the whole saga that was published a year after the fact. The quote is:

A paranoid reading describes perfectly what fandom culture has become in the modern times. It is why "proship", once simply a word for common sense "don't engage with what you don't like, and don't harass people who create it either" philosophies, has become the boogeyman of fandom, a bad and dangerous word. The days of reparative readings, where you would look for things you enjoyed, are all but dead. Fiction is rarely a chance to feel joy; it's an excuse to get angry, to vitriolically attack those different from oneself while surrounded with those who are the same as oneself. It's an excuse to form in-groups and out-groups that must necessarily be in a constant state of conflict, lest it come across like This side is accepting That side's faults. In other words, fandom has become the exact sort of space as the nonfandom spaces it used to seek to define itself against.

It's not about joy. It's not about resonance with plot or characters. It's about hate. It's about finding fault. If they can't find any in the story, they will, rest assured, create it by instigating fan wars- dividing fandom into factions and mercilessly attacking the other.

And that's if they even went so far as to read the work they're critiquing. The ones they don't bother to read, as you saw above, fare even worse. If an AO3 writer tagged an abuser/victim ship, it's bad, it's fetishism, even if the story is about how the victim escapes. If a trans writer uses the title "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter" to find a framework to dissect rainbow-washing the military-industrial complex, it's unforgivable. It's a cesspool of kneejerk reactions, moralizing discomfort, treating good/evil as dichotomous categories that can never be escaped, and using that complex as an excuse to heap harassment on people who "deserve it." Because once you are Bad, there is no action against you that is too Bad for you to deserve.

Isabel Fall's story follows this so step-by-step that it's like a textbook case study on modern fandom behavior.

Isabel Fall wrote a short story with an inflammatory title, with a genesis in transphobic mockery, in the hopes of turning it into a genuine treatise on the intersection of gender and sexuality and the military-industrial complex. But because audiences are unprepared for the idea of inflammatory rhetoric as a tool to force discomfort to then force deeper introspection... they zeroed in on the discomfort. "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter"- the title phrase, not the work- made them uncomfortable. We no longer teach people how to handle discomfort; we live in a world of euphemism and glossing over, a world where people can't even type out the words "kill" and rape", instead substituting "unalive" and "grape." We don't deal with uncomfortable feelings anymore; we censor them, we transform them, we sanitize them. When you are unable to process discomfort, when you are never given self-soothing tools, your only possible conclusion is that anything Uncomfortable must be Bad, and the creator must either be censored too, or attacked into conformity so that you never again experience the horrors of being Uncomfortable.

So the masses took to Twitter, outraged. They were Uncomfortable, and that de facto meant that they had been Wronged. Because the content was related to trans identity issues, that became the accusation; it was transphobic, inherently. It couldn't be a critique of bigger and more fluid systems than gender identity alone; it was a slight against trans people. And no amount of explanations would change their minds now, because they had already been aggrieved and made to feel Uncomfortable.

Isabel Fall was now a Bad Person, and we all know what fandom spaces do to Bad People. Bad People, because they are Bad, will always be deserving of suicide bait and namecalling and threatening. Once a person is Bad, there is no way to ever become Good again. Not by refuting the accusations (because the accusations are now self-evident facts; "there is a callout thread against them" is its own tautological proof that wrongdoing has happened regardless of the veracity of the claims in the callout) and not by apologizing and changing, because if you apologize and admit you did the Bad thing, you are still Bad, and no matter what you do in future, you were once Bad and that needs to be brought up every time you are mentioned. If you are bad, you can NEVER be more than what you were at your worst (in their definition) moment. Your are now ontologically evil, and there is no action taken against you that can be immoral.

So Isabel was doomed, naturally. It didn't matter that she outed herself to explain that she personally had lived the experience of a trans woman and could speak with authority on the atrocity of rainbow-washing the military industrial complex as a proaganda tool to capture progressives. None of it mattered. She had written a work with an Uncomfortable phrase for a title, the readers were Uncomfortable, and someone had to pay for it.

And that's the key; pay for it. Punishment. Revenge. It's never about correcting behavior. Restorative justice is not in this group's vocabulary. You will, incidentally, never find one of these folks have a stance against the death penalty; if you did Bad as a verb, you are Bad as an intrinsic, inescapable adjective, and what can you do to incorrigible people but kill them to save the Normal people? This is the same principle, on a smaller scale, that underscores their fandom activities; if a Bad fan writes Bad fiction, they are a Bad person, and their fandom persona needs to die to save Normal fans the pain of feeling Uncomfortable.

And that's what happened to Isabel Fall. The person who wrote the short story is very much alive, but the pseudonym of Isabel Fall, the identity, the lived experiences coming together in concert with imagination to form a speculative work to critique deeply problematic sociopolitical structures? That is dead. Isabel Fall will never write again, even if by some miracle the person who once used the name does. Even if she ever decides to restart her transition, she will be permanently scarred by this experience, and will never again be able to share her experience with us as a way to grow our own empathy and challenge our understanding of the world. In spirit, but not body, fandom spaces murdered Isabel Fall.

And that's... fandom, anymore. That's just what is done, routinely and without question, to Bad people. Good people are Good, so they don't make mistakes, and they never go too far when dealing with Bad people. And Bad people, well, they should have thought before they did something Bad which made them Bad people.

Isabel Fall's harassment happened in early 2020, before quarantine started, but it was in so many ways a final chance for fandom to hit the breaks. A chance for fandom to think collectively about what it wanted to be, who it wanted to be for and how it wanted to do it. And fandom looked at this and said, "more, please." It continues to harass marginalized people, especially fans of color and queen fans, into suffering mental breakdowns. With gusto.

Any ideas of reparative reading is dead. Fandom runs solely on paranoid readings. And so too is restorative justice gone for fandom transgressions, real or imagined. It is now solely about punitive, vigilante justice. It's a concerted campaign to make sure oddballs conform or die (in spirit, but sometimes even physically given how often mentally ill individuals are pushed into committing suicide).

It's a deeply toxic environment and I'm sad to say that Isabel Fall's story was, in retrospect, a sort of event horizon for the fandom. The gravitational pull of these harassment campaigns is entirely too strong now and there is no escaping it. I'm sorry, I hate to say something so bleak, but thinking the last few days about the state of fandom (not just my current one but also others I watch from the outside), I just don't think we can ever go back to peaceful "for joy" engagement, not when so many people are determined to use it as an outlet for lateral aggression against other people.

We don’t talk enough about how fanfiction writers love to give character large amounts of non-specific paperwork they hate doing

say more pls

Yeah sure why not.

So most stories take place when Events are Happening, and this means that no matter what kind of job the characters have, they’re probably not too focused on them. Fanfics, on the other hand, often show the down time. Which means that the writer has to figure out what the hell these characters do in their jobs. Unless the characters have a job the author understands or knows well, the author is often at a loss for what to have the character doing.

So they sit them at a desk and give them paperwork. What is the paperwork for? Rarely specified. It is Paper Work for the characters Important Adult Job they have and they need to read or sign it or something. And there’s always a line about how Character Hates Paperwork. Doesn’t matter if Character is a Mafia Boss or a General or a Diplomat, here they are in an office trying to get out of Doing Paperwork.

There’s also a sense of, like, humor and mundanity that comes with it. Like the examples above, it always particularly stands out to me when a dangerous individual is griping about some paper they need to sign or something. The less you can picture Character doing paperwork, all the better to force it upon them. If Character is saddled with Paperwork, they’re usually now concerned about the physical damages their motley crew causes, because damage = More Paperwork.

Anyway I just think it’s fun or funny, Sephiroth doing paper work and Sawada Tsunayoshi doing paper work and this just in, Tony Stark is doing paperwork. Sorry, Phoenix Wright can’t play right now. Yeah, it’s paperwork.

A very non-exhaustive list of actual paperwork they could be completing/reviewing/approving, in no particular order:

Your Royalty or Nobles in your feudal society should be doing this constantly unless you want to show how they're losing the kingdom and about to be usurped or overthrown.

petitions, speech-writing, complaints, requests, assignations, disputes, judiciary forms, declarations that need signing off on, matters requiring the Royal seal, matters requiring a royal endorsement, pardons, judgments, invitations, rebuttals, census data, crop yields projected or actual, livestock records, water rights, Sumptuary laws, taxes taxes taxes...

solid point there!

even when the royalty look like they're just fucking off to have fun, they're doing Socially Mandated Fuck-Off and Have Fun Time

Tournaments? Gotta show you're manly and virile through sport, or the nobles will supplant you. Feasts? Gotta show you're wealthy through conspicuous consumption, or the nobles will supplant you. Patronizing the arts? Gotta show you're cultured and erudite, or the nobles will laugh at you behind your back and probably supplant you.

Lawyer here. Here’s some more mundane/modern ones for you:

And if you want to get into modern military, the forms are numbered, and people will refer to them by either their actual name, or the number. (Have you filled out the 4187 for this? Yes, I filled out the personnel action form.)

The military has so many forms.

If you want to add a rage level, there’s the Regular Paperwork and then the special hell of Fuckup Paperwork.

Cause there’s the invoice, and the follow up invoice and the we are about to have a problem follow-up invoice.

There’s the incident report and then the I swear I yelled at that worker about this don’t be mad at me if they do it again second warning documentation

The requisition form and the it has been six months now get me the fucking thing or you’re gonna hear from Cindy escalations form.

Paperwork has layers and protocols and backups.

May I add: GRANTS.

If your character is any sort of lawful do-gooder or works for anything charitable or non-profit, they'll always need to deal with grants.

Grants are when a government, organization or rich person say "I have a large amount of money and I want it to be spent on this cause I care about". And everyone who is attached to the cause has to write an essay about why they deserve it including

And THEN if they get the money, they've got to keep track of every item on that list and write a report AGAIN when the project is done explaining how according-to-plan everything went.

If they're a Batman sort and they're giving away money, then someone has to read through two hundred copies of the above.

Grant writing and management is a full time job that's NOTHING but paperwork and emails, but is also necessary for most nonprofit and charitable organizations.

This saga does also illustrate something I learned about in library school, which is: when management starts reducing your staffing (or other resources) to the point that it jeopardizes your ability to function, make visible cuts.

Don't stretch yourselves to the breaking point to keep doing as much as possible, and don't cut corners where customers/clients/patients/patrons won't notice. Say out loud, "Due to low funding/staffing, we can no longer do X," where X is something visible but not mission-critical.

In the library world, this is usually a small reduction in hours: we lose an employee position, we stop being open on Sundays, or we close an hour earlier every day. (And we put up signs saying exactly why, and to whom patrons can complain.)

If you say "this isn't enough resources/we're understaffed/we can't go on like this," but then you continue to go on like this? You've just proved that you can indeed go on like this.

Of course, not everyone is in a position where you can make decisions like this--reducing hours, or suspending a particular service; the reason we learn this in library school is that we usually have a clear bright line between operational management and funding. However, you can still ask. Management says, "For now this store is going to have to get by with 6 employees instead of 7," you say, "Okay; what are we going to stop doing, to make that work?"

And if the answer is, "Nothing," you just...let the problems happen. Someone gets sick, and they really need you to come on your day off? Sorry, but you made plans that you can't break (even if those plans are "lay in bed and eat ice cream"). But they can't open the store if you don't come in? Sounds like the store isn't going to be open. Hopefully we'll be able to get up to full staffing before this problem comes up again!

In the story above, the COVID quarantine situation was, of course, unpredictable, but if management had taken the lesson any of the times when appointments had to be cancelled because a doctor called off due to physical exhaustion, perhaps they would have had some options when both of their pediatricians were unavailable due to a global health emergency; who can say?

It can feel like sort of a dick move--to your immediate boss, your coworkers, your patrons/customers/clients/patients/whoever--to say no when it isn't technically absolutely impossible to say yes. But the doctor and the nanny in this story were both right to stick to their guns about this one well-planned and anticipated day off, and the rest was just a cascade of failure that ultimately stems from the decision to intentionally understaff the hospital, and to ignore warning signs of an impending staffing crisis.

You gotta read and watch some old books and films that aren’t 100% modern politically correct. I’m not saying you should agree with everything in them but you need to learn where genres came from to understand what those genres are doing today and where media deconstructing old tropes is coming from.

Also, more often than you might think, they’re not actually promoting bigotry so much as “didn’t consider all the implications of something” or just used words that were polite then but considered offensive now.

Kill the censor in your head.

I reblogged this and this is true for ALL the old "greats" -- even if you don't like them personally, they were hugely influential and it can be great to know what people examined, what they took from it and what they rejected.

But I'm gonna talk for a moment about something near and dear to my (and tumblr)'s hearts: queer sci-fi/fantasy. Because I think we read a lot of the stuff now, but maybe don't always see where it came from -- what it's responding to. I grew up in the 80s-90s and although I only had a limited window on what was happening, I voraciously found whatever I could and wanted to make some recs so you could know what the queer youth who liked sci-fi/fantasy were seeking out during that time. People, feel free to reblog on with your own recs! But first I also want to talk a bit about the experience I had finding these books and what the environment was like when reading 'em.

A general warning that applies to most of the below: You will find portrayals or elements that are problematic today. There may be world-expected sexism or homophobia, you'll see portrayals that seem stereotypical now, there may be sexual assault (on page or fade to black), racism, large age gaps, or things like that. This is both because again, it came from similar fiction of the period and they were nodding to genre tropes, things people in the period were dealing with (or perceived the fantasized past of dealing with), and many other reasons. But as the first poster noted, a lot of the time these were the people who were putting their reputations on the line to try to create any kind of portrayal at all. They were doing it with good intentions and they were breaking ground that needed to be broken.

What do I mean by that: Well, 'gay stuff' was NOT embraced by the mainstream, and was often feared (or, in the case of lesbian fiction, was treated as just fetish stuff for straight men). I was bullied pretty heavily in jr high and high school for being queer (even before I knew I was). This was the height of the aids epidemic and a lot of people did not know how that 'worked'; my assigned math partner in grade 10 thought that any gay-intended contact (not even sexual, but handholding) could cause aids to spontaneously generate in the people involved. Editors did not want to be publishing 'gay fiction'. A lot of early stuff was in small-print zines that I never encountered; other stuff was a real risk taken by the people involved who genuinely believed that it was worth representing diverse people to reflect a diverse reality. But even up until the early 2000s I was seeing amateur authors trying to get published coming back to our forums or journal communities depressed with the news that a big publisher would only publish their fiction if they swapped the gender of one of their protagonists (This was SUPER common, editors agreeing the work had literary merit but refusing to publish unless someone changed it to remove the queerness). Self-publishing wasn't really a 'thing' -- there were zines, which had VERY limited in-person distribution only, and there was so-called "vanity publishing" (where you pay a company to produce a professional-looking print run or print on demand), but since there were no online marketplaces (the internet was very early -- Amazon didn't open as an online bookseller until 1995!), good luck getting those into stores. People really looked down on "vanity publishing" also. Keep in mind everything we know about lesbian pulp novels being forced to have tragic endings in the 50s-60s; that was only around ~30 years before this, and keep in mind that it took until 2003 for same-sex sexual activity to be fully made legal in the US -- these things were portraying what was at the time illegal behaviour under sodomy laws. So yeah, these books are ones people fought to get out there and took a risk on. Keep the problematic elements in mind with that!

So How Did People Find This: It wasn't written on the back cover of most books, because it wasn't something people could advertise on. Here were 3 ways I found queer sci-fi fantasy: 1. I read a LOT from my local library and if I lucked into something I would look up the people they thanked in their acknowledgements also, or the people they appeared in fiction anthologies with. If I did this enough I would kind of figure out some 'vibes' of the excerpt on the first page, or things like, a lot of them used similar cover artists (shoutout Jody Lee). 2. I was in the PFLAG group originally, and then ended up in anime club, which was coincidentally (or not, given that there were a lot more queer characters in anime than western media at the time) where a lot of the queer kids also ended up. If we found something, we could rec it to each other. Groups like this and word of mouth was common.

3. They got taken down often, but online rec lists appeared on personal webpages (there was no google early on, remember; we used 'turnpike' pages that had lists of relevant things). Since I was into anime, I found the aestheticism.net list of "Yaoi and Slash Fiction in English". Part of this cringe titling was that we were coding things so 'we' could find them without getting in trouble, since words like 'yaoi' or 'BL' or 'Slash' or 'June' meant nothing to the people around us back then.

That all said, here's a list of some authors I read and enjoyed back then, with a few notes. Again, note the warning above, and again, feel free to add onto it with more. You can also find what was considered iconic and important works by checking the Lambda Awards lists of sci-fi/fantasy finalists (check the main award for other genres).

Mercedes Lackey Mercedes Lackey wrote (and is still writing) the Valdemar series, a series of mostly-trilogies all set in the same world about psychic high fantasy royal heralds who rode magic telepathic horses and tried to solve problems in the world. It is THE biggest work of romantic fantasy in the world and was hugely genre-defining. Lackey also worked hard to include some form of queer characters (gay, bi, and lesbian) in most of her works, and again, was not always unproblematic but was out here forging a path despite lack of resources. Her first Valdemar trilogy has some lesbian characters; The Last Herald Mage Trilogy, the second set of Valdemar books (consisting of Magic's Pawn, Magic's Promise, Magic's Price) was incredibly groundbreaking for having a gay protagonist saving the world. Lots of female leads across her books also.

Tanya Huff Tanya Huff is one of the most prominent Canadian authors in contemporary fantasy. Most of her books have at least one queer character in them. If you're here for high fantasy I suggest the Quarters series (lesbian/bi/gay characters) or The Fire's Stone (gay/bi/arguably the third party is somewhere on the asexual spectrum). She has a huge contemporary fantasy series about vampires, the Blood series; a gay character from the Blood series gets his own spinoff series, the Smoke series, later. But nearly anything you pick up from her will have queer rep across the spectrum. She's married to Fiona Patton :)

Fiona Patton Another Canadian author, and married to Tanya Huff. Her Branion Realm series, a high fantasy series about a divine royal line who control elemental powers, and the normal lower-class people who deal with them. It has unisex ranks for its royals and is a bisexual-normative world. It got me through many a tough time in high school. I remember enjoying the Stone Prince particularly (though it's been many years since I read it).

Ellen Kushner I cannot recommend Swordspoint: A Melodrama of Manners highly enough; it's sort of a regency political romance with a very mild-mannered protagonist and a very unhinged love interest. The next novel chronologically after it is The Privilege of the Sword which has a bisexual young woman being forced to learn swordplay when she wants to be debuting at balls, and it goes VERY well for her.

Lynn Flewelling She wrote specifically to try to counter the near-absence of LGBT characters in the genre. Her biggest series is the Nightrunner series, about a young man who gets rescued by an elf spy when they were both in prison together and who learns how to spy alongside him. Lots of elf stuff, magic things, dark fantasy elements. The first two books (Luck in the Shadows and Stalking Darkness) are particularly strong and formed a fairly complete duology around a single plot, though the books continue after. She also has a trilogy called the Tamir Triad, a ghost-story psychological drama fantasy about a character forced to grow up as the wrong sex.

Katie Waitman Her novel The Merro Tree was so ahead of its time that she ended up quitting writing one (unrelated) novel later, to my understanding it was due to how badly her editor treated her, unfortunately. It stars an alien super-musician performing a banned dance; the whole thing is a frame narrative of him in person awaiting trial. He also has a soulbonded husband who is a giant snake alien, and is polyamorous and pansexual.

Jim Grimsley I personally only really liked his novel Kirith Kirin so I'm only talking about that here, but he's written a lot of heartfelt and intense gay fiction. Kirith Kirin takes the same premise that you see with a lot of the young adult fiction or romantic fantasy we grew up with with things like the farmboy who saved the world or the young farmgirl who turned out to have a special power and was whisked away by a sexy older mentor (Tamora Pierce style) and made it queer (yes, that means there's an age gap here, but it's Tamora Pierce style there too). The main character becomes an absolutely unhinged wizard and it's great.

A few other authors I haven't read much of or otherwise can't talk much about because I haven't reread in decades, but also were big names at the time: Delia Sherman (LGBT+ fantasy, often bittersweet); Melissa Scott (LGBT+ fantasy and sci-fi, usually exciting adventures); Storm Constantine (really weird fantasy/sci-fi about doing away with old genders and making up new ones); Nicola Griffith (hugely important lesbian sci-fi author and a major disability advocate), Samuel R. Delany (one of the hugest names in sci-fi fantasy, and a Black gay author). Though there were obviously way more, too, this is just off the top of my head here.

Feel free to add more (and maybe I'll pick some more books up too as a result)!

I was thinking about why Rose Quartz/Pink Diamond is so hated.

The obvious answer is because of the horrible things she did.

But the other diamonds did horrible things too…worse things even.

Pink abandoned Spinel, which is wrong, but Spinel was planning to kill every living thing on Earth to spite the son of a person who was no longer even alive. Yet, no one talks about what a monster Spinel is.

So many Steven Universe characters have hurt people, but we forgive them and are happy to see them redeemed.

So why not Rose?

Then, it hit me: because Rose’s redemption arc is told to us in reverse.

The first time we see Rose is toward the end of her life when she is pregnant with Steven. We see her appreciation for life and how full of love she is for Greg and her future child. She’s willingly sacrificing herself to bring a new life into the world.

But then, we start learning who Rose used to be, all her mistakes, all the people she hurt.

The loving mother in Steven’s video becomes a distant memory.

For those of you who hate Rose, imagine her backstory unfolded a little differently for us.

We’re introduced to Pink Diamond: she’s spoiled, bratty, immature, irresponsible, and inconsiderate.

She throws temper tantrums when she doesn’t get her way.

Not exactly an endearing character, right?

But one day, her tantrum injure Pink Pearl, her best friend. From that day on, she keeps everything to herself. Now we see her dealing with a consequence of her bad behavior.

Then we see how she’s abused by the other diamonds. We start to sympathize with her.

We see her try to save Earth. We see her trying to do the right thing for once.

But it backfires horribly.

She spends the rest of her life trying to fix it, but she can’t.

She meets Greg. Here is where Rose has the most emotional growth as a character. She learns what is truly means to be a “real person.”

Finally, she grows such an appreciation for human life, that she decides to sacrifice her form to bring her son into the world.

The reason Rose is so much more controversial than other characters who have done problematic things is because her story is told in reverse, her redemption comes across as a fall from grace.

But there are plenty of characters who have a fall from grace who are still not as controversial as Rose. The reason why many people are less sympathetic to Rose is because we never see how Rose reacts to her mistakes. We never get much insight into how Rose feels about herself and the things she’s done. We get small hints:

For everyone who hates Rose, I get why. But I think we need to remember who she became instead of who she was.

I feel like to older fans her arc feels like a betrayal, she was supposed to something for Steven to look up to and aspire to be, and that could never do anything wrong because she was put on such a pedestal where if you implied she was anything other then kind or loving or perfect was blasphemous. 

But she’s a person, people make mistakes, they get hurt and they lash out.

But she’s a person,

people make mistakes, they get

hurt and they lash out.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

Forgive me for the essay but also I think a key part of the hatred is because Steven Universe does something not a lot of stories–and especially not a lot of stories for children–are willing to do; they treat Rose’s death as truly final.

In a lot of stories the dead are never really shown as being truly gone. Which I understand, most humans are kinda hard-wired into believing that the dead are still with us in one way or another, we don’t cope well with the idea that someone can just stop, but that means that not a lot of writers are willing to actually engage with death as something final in their narratives. Not to paraphrase wiser people than I, but Geoff Thew of Mother’s Basement pointed out in one of his critiques of SAO that killing a character is interesting and tricky because it means they are no longer a force that can effect the narrative. Whatever arc they were having is cut short, their relationships cannot progress in a way that isn’t one-sided, they are stuck as who they were when they died and no longer have agency. They are stagnate, frozen in time, unchanging as everything and everyone else changes without them.

So a lot of stories will confirm that the character is “still there” in some way. They will come visit another character in a dream or as a ghost to offer comfort and advice, or it will be hinted/confirmed that they are doing things behind the scenes like protecting living loves ones, they’re still around, just not in the same way the living characters are. And while that can be sweet and wonderful and some stories deploy it in truly masterful ways that make me weep so hard I can’t breathe and live rent free in my head forever…it’s also a bit of a cop-out imo. You don’t have to contend with the massive narrative shift that is having an entire character just stop, you just slide them into a passive state where they can keep going in their own way that’s separate but still present.

Steven Universe does not take that cop-out. Rose is dead. She’s gone, they DRIVE that home time and time again. Everything that was Rose became Steven, and that might mean that she’s essentially reincarnated or whatever, but for all intents and purposes Rose as she was is 100% gone forever and will never be coming back.

That on it’s own is interesting, but then SU does something even smarter; it sets Rose up as the perfect embodiment of all things good and pure and then spends the rest of the show meticulously tearing her back down. We see ALL of Rose’s mistakes come to light, every unkind and messy and hurtful and awful thing she’s done is dragged out in front of our very eyes and ROSE IS NOT THERE TO FIX ANY OF IT. We don’t even get her BEING there to remind us that she was a flawed person with unfathomable power in a horrible situation with no good options trying her hardest to do as much good as she possibly could under the circumstances. All we see now is Rose’s problems. Her flaws. The mistakes she made. And she’s not there to help us pick up the pieces.

Rose probably would apologize to Bismuth and Spinel and Pearl and everyone she ever hurt if she could, we can tell when she was alive she was absolutely drowning in guilt and regret, but she can’t mend those wrongs because she’s dead. She doesn’t get to visit Pearl or Greg in their dreams and beg them to stop hating each other, or release Pearl from her unintentional vow of silence, she can’t apologize to Bismuth or even just TELL anyone where Spinel has been all this time, she cannot explain why she did the things she did to Steven so he can understand her better or get closure or even just tell him that she really did love him more than anything. Rose cannot fix her mistakes, she cannot give anyone closure, she can’t do anything at all.

She’s gone, and all we are left with is the memory and legacy of an imperfect person who tried her best and failed far more than she succeeded but still loved with everything she had.

The closest thing we get to Rose adding her own voice to the story after she’s gone is the tape she leaves for Steven, in which she is the person she became after everything; a kind, flawed gem who loves her family and earth so deeply that she’s willing to die just so her son can have a chance to experience the joy that is being alive. And tbh I wish more people would remember that version of her, and offer her a bit of grace or at least recognition that she did change and mend things as best she could, but still. We can’t ask the tape questions. The tape can’t tell us what Rose would have thought about whatever was going on at the time. The tape cannot beg our forgiveness or express remorse. It’s a snapshot of a brief moment where Rose was free and happy, a reminder that she did love Steven, but it can never replace her.

The show even goes out of it’s way to drive Rose’s absence home, by having Steven TRY to use her room to make her, only to realize he’s still just talking to his perception of who she might have been, not who she actually was. So much of his grief and pain in the show comes from the fact that he cannot talk to the one person he needs to speak to more than anyone because she’s gone, and that’s the point.

Steven Universe is about grief just as much as it’s about love, and that’s something I really appreciate both as a writer and as someone who has lost people I loved dearly.

I think that’s part of the issue. People just don’t get what Rose being dead means, and they hold her to a standard the show is actively working against. We understand that death is not redemption, redemption is a flawed concept in the first place but it requires the person trying to make things right like, actually being alive to make things right. Rose had her redemption arc off screen for the most part, and Steven never got to see it, WE never get to see it outside of flashbacks. We never get to spend a lot of time with post-war but pre-Steven Rose, when she was at her best. We mostly just see her mistakes because those are what’s causing half the problems in the show. We see her in reverse, going from being a goddess of goodness to someone so profoundly flawed it’s hard to even know how to feel about her, and then the show drives home that you just have to learn to live with that.

The show is asking us to accept that Rose was flawed, and has done things that she shouldn’t have as well as things that are probably hard if not impossible to forgive, but that she was good, and she loved so deeply and profoundly that she was willing to fake her death, cut ties with everything she ever knew, go to WAR, and eventually die so her son could live, and she’s gone now.

She’s gone.

Steven Universe really is one of the most realistic and beautiful depictions of death and grief I’ve ever seen and I hate how all of that gets ignored in favor of making Rose out to be a supervillain rather than the flawed yet good person she really was. Y'all have to stop standing at the foot of her statue and demanding she answer for her crimes. She can’t. But we, the characters and the fans, can accept her for who she was flaws and all, let her go, and pick up the pieces ourselves.

That’s the whole point.

kabru and the dungeon lords

kabru is a very critical character to dungeon meshi for a thousand and one reasons, and not merely for his status as the point-of-view character in the story's b-plot. kabru represents the compass by which dungeon meshi's world works. he has big-picture motives that involve the entire world, much grander than the original a-plot of "let's save falin."

he is our classic hero, a character who suffered great personal tragedy and must ensure that no one suffers the same fate. as such, he is a great parallel for dungeon meshi's most integral characters:

the dungeon lords themselves.

🚨manga spoilers ahead.🚨

Marvel movies have completely eliminated the concept of practical effects from the movie-watching public’s consciousness

Not just practical effects just like. Basic set design lol

How… How do they think sci-fi was done before CGI?

Really badly? Do you remember sci-fi before CGI? It was shit. And don’t say Star Wars because they went back and fixed that with CGI later.

*big sigh* *puts head in hands* heathens who’ve never watched pre-MCU sci-fi movies OR the unedited Star Wars movies, my beloathed

So first of all, most people agree that the majority of the “CGI fixes” in the Star Wars original trilogy (excluding minor visual/sound effects like lightsaber colors and blaster sounds) are unececssary, extremely conspicuous, and/or bad. This is not news to literally anyone older than about 20 who has consumed Star Wars content on any level. There are quite literally two very famous ‘despecialized’ fan projects explicitly dedicated to un-doing all of the shitty “fixed” CGI effects while simultaneously restoring the OT in HD.

And yes, I do, in fact, remember sci-fi special effects before CGI was the foundational cornerstone of moviemaking. It was not, in fact, shit:

Also, ironically I can show you by….*gasp* using fucking Star Wars, of all things. Welcome to the Tatooine pod race set of The Phantom Menace, which was not, as popularly believed, CGI’d but was instead a fully-built miniature set:

Yes, they built the entire set as a minature, built life-sized pod racers for the actors, then spliced the two together using digital effects. Yes, they did such a fantastic job that people think the entire set and scene sequence was basically completely CGI’d to this day. You’re fucking welcome for undervaluing the time, effort, and talents of set designers by implying that set design and practical effects inherently mean things will look like shit.

CGI also ages really poorly. What you think looks incredibly realistic now is going to look terrible in a few years. Just look at the original vs remastered Star Trek. They “restored” Star Trek around 2006 and replaced a lot of the practical effects with CGI, and maybe it looked ok in 2006, but it looks so bad and fake now.

You can see a video comparison for one episode here: https://youtu.be/ruPVTPCavdM

In the 60s they built a whole model of the Enterprise, complete with blinking lights and beautifully sculpted/painted details. It looks stunning! Then they replaced it with that horribly smooth and fake looking cgi ship.

Just look at this beauty

You can see the model at the Air and Space Museum in DC

Unfortunately the remastered version is the only version available to stream, but you can still find DVDs with the original effect.

made in 1968 and still stunning 2001 A Space Odyssey

the designers worked with engineers at NASA to make realistic futuristic special effects using models and matte paintings no computer effects at all! - and incidentally inspired David Bowie to write Space Oddity, later performed in space by astronaut Chris Hadfield

The CGI of the original Jurassic Park may not be aging well (though arguably still better than some), but the practical effects will always look stunning. 

I want to talk fantasy.

This shot was achieved with splicing and green screen.

This wild-looking shot (and similar manipulations) was famously achieved by having a professional juggler in a duplicate of Bowie’s jacket and gloves sitting behind him, basically with Bowie in his lap, doing the handwork while Bowie kept his arms behind the juggler. You may have seen a game based on this on Whose Line Is It Anyway.

This? Wires! Splicing! THE CGI TO DO THIS DIDN’T EXIST YET! (The juggler is hidden under the cape. If there’s a scene where he’s wearing a cape, that’s actually probably why.)

And this? This heartstopping shot?

This does appear to be from the version with CGI—

—CGI THAT WAS USED TO ERASE THE SHADOW FROM THE PRACTICAL EFFECT.

The shot itself hasn’t changed. The lift itself was done with wires and Bowie was given some propulsion with an air cannon so he could make that turn at speed. A minor amount of CGI was used in the 30th anniversary to “touch up” the work done in 1986, and one of the things they did was to remove a shadow on the wall from one of the wires.

How about this?

You don’t know it, but you’re looking at a practical effect. In real life, the Ruby Slippers are almost orange. That luxe, rich ruby color showed up on the film as black when the shoes were the correct color, so the costumers adjusted the actual costume to give the color they wanted.

A MODEL OF A HOUSE SHOT INSIDE A NYLON STOCKING ATTACHED TO A FAN.

MAN IN A COSTUME.

HORSES DUSTED WITH COLORED GELATIN.

And this? This is where it would’ve been useful to have CGI. Margaret Hamilton got really badly burned on the steam doing one of her entrance/exits, and ended up in the hospital. THIS is what you use CGI for.

You come into my house and insult practical effects?

I’ll just finish off by reminding you THIS IS ONE, TOO.

That last one, iirc, was there was a double in a sepia-toned costume, and the interior door and wall there was painted brown, so when it was lit and shot it all appeared to still be in the sepia tone of the Kansas scenes, and part of why Dorothy stepped back out of the frame was so the double and Judy Garland (in the proper blue-and-white costume) could swap.

You are correct. The double’s name, by the way, was Bobbi Koshay.

#this is also a purely personal opinion but aged practical effects are charming #in a way that aged cgi is not (via @glorious-spoon)

Another movie that was made without CGI:

There are so many practical effects in Mary Poppins that it’s unbelievable. Ranging from the big ones (popping through pictures, tea parties on the ceiling, flying with an umbrella, etc.) to the incredibly little details, there’s a big reason why Mary Poppins won the Oscar for “Best Visual Effects” in 1965

I can’t find a list of all effects used, so this is just going off my memory of a documentary I watched once, so bear with me here; some of these things might be misremembered. But, some of the practical effects used in this film:

- Actors suspended on wires

- Scenes filmed front of a white screen lit with sodium vaporlights (early cinema’s “greenscreen” before greenscreen was invented)

- Matte paintings on glass for the cityscape scenes (rooftops of London, St. Paul Cathedral, etc.)

- Animatronics (the robin that whistles with Mary Poppins is an animatronic controlled by a wire, and the movement and sound you see on-screen was what it was actually doing on-set. The talking parrot umbrella head was also an animatronic.)

- Moving set pieces (every time they slide up or down the banister, they’re riding on a mechanized chair-lift hidden from the camera)

- Padded stairs (when they climb up the staircase made of smoke, the actors actually were climbing up a staircase padded with thick styrofoam, so that their feet would actually sink in some. The children found it particularly challenging, prompting Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews to offer extra help in keeping them balanced, thus really selling the idea that they are two kids walking on smoke with assistance from their guardians)

- Scene splicing (When she pulls impossibly large items from her carpet bag, she’s pulling them through a hole from under the table. The scene was spliced with footage depicting the table with nothing underneath it - except for Michael, who crawled underneath to ‘examine’ for a hole)

- Hidden compartments in bottles containing liquid of different colors (this one is my favorite lol; the children were not told that the medicine would come out of the bottle in different colors; they were just supposed to complain about taking it. Their reactions of shock and amazement are 100% genuine)

Even tiny details that you wouldn’t normally even think of as “special effects” were paid careful attention to, in order to help sell the story. Such as, during the Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious scene, while Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke are dancing and acting their hearts out, the children are supposed to sit on a fence and eat candy-apples. However, after filming for a long time, the kids were sick of the candy apples they’d been eating. So, Disney called for candy-apples made in tons of unique and delicious flavors, just colored to all look the same. It became the children’s favorite thing about the scene: they just got to sit and listen to fun music and watch the adults sing and dance while they tried a hundred different candy-apples, which is why they’re devouring them like little lions every time you see them on-screen.

(Also not so much a practical effect but just cute to note while I’m talking about Mary Poppins: the kids kept actually falling asleep during filming for the scenes in which Julie Andrews sings them lullabies lol)

CGI has its uses, to be sure. But it ought to be used to ENHANCE practical effects, not REPLACE them.

tbh that’s what Coraline is. And pretty much every movie by LAIKA Studios. It’s all filmed with practical effects and then enhanced with CGI.

Practical effects are actually amazing, and the overreliance on CGI makes films look far more ‘fake’ and causes them to grow outdated far more quickly than modern producers want people to admit.

Mainly because set designers and practical effects specialists are UNIONIZED but computer animators are not, making their labor easy to exploit and often leaving them massively overworked and underpaid.

I know I was already here, but since @plushchrome1212 made this incredible addition, I just want to point out this is a gold standard of practical effects work. Like. What I wrote above probably clued you in that I love looking for the man behind the curtain and going “oh, THAT’S how they did that!”

Mary Poppins is my favorite Disney movie. In 33 years, it has never once occurred to me to question how any of it was done. The illusion is so complete, I’m a grownass adult who just. Accepted that they disappeared into the sidewalk.

Can Someone please add the plant puppet from “My little shop of horrors”!?

That special effect was fenomenal and it took 6-8 people to move that puppet!

I got you:

Mean Green Mother From Outer Space scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQJagD96X8U&t=22s

This post keeps geting better throughout the years!

Well modern camera equipment can almost see in the dark so what do you even need lighting for?

i just gotta real quick make sure that youre joking. you are joking, right?

I’m not joking. Do you understand the ISO value system as it relates to film?

im not arguing that you cant film in the dark without special lighting (obviously you can), im saying you shouldnt. im arguing with the second half of your statement. the lighting in the first picture is very purposeful and enhances the horror of the film. they didnt get into the editing room and go “oh darn, we forgot to shine a light on the guy hiding in the shadows!” jaws was made scarier because you could rarely see the shark, so your brain invented the scariest possibility. you can just… see the whole man in the second picture. having a flat shot where the lighting doesnt even draw in the viewers eye to anything (much less obscure something thats supposed to give the movie tension and anticipation) looks fucking boring and adds nothing

thats what we need lighting for

One of these is much more visually appealing than the other

Lighting in film, and especially horror is so *so* important to the tension in the scene, it’s a significant part of visual storytelling, and the cinematographer/DOP (director of photography) should’ve picked up on that.

It’s particularly embarrassing in comparison to the original material, as with digital/modern technology, you can literally see how the shot looks while you’re shooting.

This should’ve also been sorted in comp and fixed well before distribution.

As already pointed out, the lighting values have no depth to them, thus creating a very flat scene (this is one of the first design principles we are taught in design for animation/film- if I had handed in a lighting shot or concept anything like this, I would’ve failed the module).

If you take the shots and put them into greyscale, you can see this a lot clearer.

In the original Halloween shot, we can see a high range of value (how bright or dark something is)- the lighting is brightest on Jamie Lee Curtis, the viewer’s eye is drawn to her first- we can see her emotions clearly and gain sympathy for her character. Then we are drawn into the darkest value, creating dread, and this is fulfilled and heightened with the contrasting (and next highest) value of Michael’s mask.

In the modern shot, all the values are within a similar range (mid-greys), and there is no proper depth in value- making the tension within the shot fall flat (not ideal for horror).

In fact, the highest value in this shot is the fire in the background- which is where the eye is drawn to first. The background. Not the action. So instead of feeling empathy or dread, we are focusing on the wrong details.

And yes, while it could be said from a film analysis POV that the flatness of the shot ‘puts the characters on the same fighting ground/level of power in the shot,’ I’m not going to give them the benefit.

To top it off, the use of colour in the modern shot highlights the errors in lighting. Whilst sharing the blue/orange colour scheme of the original shot, everything is blue except the one area of contrast, the orange fire. So once again, we are drawn to none of the action and instead the background.

With a very small edit in compositing and lighting to match the original Halloween, the feeling (and focus) of the shot is completely changed. The shot has higher contrast and range of values- the focus is on Curtis, while Michael feels more foreboding in the darkness. The contrast puts the characters on opposite sides- good vs evil, telling a narrative in contrast to the unedited shot.

These effects could’ve easily been achieved by adding a key light on Curtis and rim lighting on Michael in production, and if necessary, editing value depth in comp to enhance the raw footage.

TLDR: Digital filmmakers still need to know traditional film and design theory- just because you have good actors, cameras and composition, does not mean you can forgo basic film craft. The aim of cinematography is to enhance the narrative, not restrict it.

ultimately… who cares if cameras can see in the dark? we’re not making movies for cameras.

Okay no Chicago is not a coastal city. When I moved up to the Midwest (currently in iowa) and I heard someone say "let's go to the beach" and they meant TO A LAKE I about died. The beach is Galveston, corpus Christi, Miami, etc. Beaches are where the land touches THE OCEAN. not a lake!! I will die on this hill!!!! Midwesterners just want to pretend like their states aren't boring as fuck. Be happy with your great lakes and stop calling them beaches! They're lake shores!

If you say beach and you mean to include lake shores then you're admitting your state is boring and also you're wrong bc nobody thinks "beach" and by *default* includes lake superior or wtv

You wish your beaches had this kind of view

Girl, the only Beach National Park is along Lake Michigan, Her Name? Indiana DUNES National Park and she is in the Chicagoland area!

not the point at all but portland is not a coastal city at all

Yeah but Portlanders are considered Coastal Elites so it's a Coastal City in Spirit

coastal? no. elites? absolutely

Google being wrong once again

I don't know, San Francisco seems pretty oceanic to me

if you're in a state that borders the ocean you can't call a lake a beach BUT if you're in a state with huge lakes and no oceans you can absolutely call a big enough lake shore a beach. some lake shores are very very beach like

Okay but Buffalo NY has Beaches too

As the Great Lakes are basically inland freshwater seas, they get a pass on the beach thing. Other lakes have to call their stuff lakeshores.

Which of these is Lake Michigan and Which is Lake Kentucky?

And more importantly which looks nicer to spend an afternoon?

im assuming Lake Kentucky is on the left because the trees are nicer

How the fuck did you guess that based off of the trees?

Well also Coastal Cities and Coastal Elites just means like East Coast and West Coast, that's why Portland is counted. So like the states are coastal, not necessarily the cities.

As a Portlander, none of us consider our city actually costal.

Correct, Chicago is a Coastal City and Portland is Not a Coastal City

Chicago is not a coastal city as it's not on the ocean. Coastal Cities and Coastal Elites are buzzwords to say "these places are out of touch with middle america" and by middle america they mean the midwest (which is not in the middle but is still called the midwest). They will never call the people of Charleston, SC Coastal Elites despite Charleston being on the Atlantic coast because to the people who came up with the buzzword, that's not a place for Elites because it isn't the ~Left Coast~ (aka the Pacific coast of the United States that trends more liberal in the liberal-conservative political divide) or the Northeast.

Well arbitrary until someone makes the correct observation that Chicago is on a coast and is therefore a Coastal City

Lake Michigan isn't your normal Lake

yeah ig that does look like a sea. ill agree w you

Thank you <3

Anyways if you don't consider Chicago a coastal city because the water is mostly enclosed and can only leave by river or one other entrance than by your own logic New Haven isn't a Coastal City because it is in the Long Island Sound

Either Lake Michigan counts as a Coast or the Long Island Sound Doesn't count because you can't have it both ways

And before you say it's the salt water that makes it coastal than Salt Lake City is Coastal

And that doesn't even connect to the ocean

Good thing that's not my metric (:

A Sound is part of the Ocean.

I really don't think that is relevant to the broader discussion

if Chicago is coastal Detroit is coastal, which it is. Chicago, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Toronto are all coastal. It’s called the “laurentian coast” named after the st. Laurence seaway.

Exactly, the Third Coast isn't the fucking Gulf, that's just part part of the Atlantic, the 3rd (and best) Coast is the Great Lakes

I mean, it's an hour drive to the coast on a good day from Portland that HAS to mean it's a coastal town, right?

And it's a 10 minute walk in Chicago, So Chicago is more coastal

I would argue that "coast" implies not only a waterfront but one that represents a significant boundary, HOWEVER, by this definition I am willing to count Chicago as coastal because the lake represents not only a major body of water but also a national border. Salt Lake City is not coastal because it is on the border of nothing except perhaps the limits of human folly.

Tumblr's Favorite Show: Finals!

After several months of fierce fighting, with 256 initial combatants, we have made it to the FINALS

Now, it's time to determine Tumblr's Favorite Show!

Previous rounds can be found below the break: