solarpunkandtea - Tumblr blog

[solarpunkandtea]

Fighting depression by cooking, baking and growing things.

[solarpunkandtea]

How to write gay sex scenes.

[solarpunkandtea]

Attempting to cure my arachnophobia.

[solarpunkandtea]

I’ve have written more in the last month than in the last two years. Maybe my brain is getting back to my normal.

[solarpunkandtea]

It’s apparently donut day, but I don’t have the stuff to make donuts so we are doing cookies.

[solarpunkandtea]

[solarpunkandtea]

After I gave birth I watched House of the Dragon and those birth scenes, the scene of someone who had just given birth walking while leaving a trail of blood behind her, felt like catharsis.

when birth is depicted as body horror, as an act of violence

[solarpunkandtea]

My toddler puts my hyperfixations to shame. Want to listen to an audiobook? Cars. Want to listen to music? Cars soundtrack. Want to watch a movie? Cars. Want to play with your toys? Cars. Want to play a game? Cars.

Zoom zoom, baby!

[solarpunkandtea]

I audition for the role of Ophelia.

Ophelia might be 18. She might be 25. We don’t know. We know she’s young and pretty. I’m 27 and fairly pretty. I’m not young.

The director says he won’t cast someone who “looks” older than 25. I know this means he won’t cast someone who looks older than he thinks 25-year-olds look like.

The truth is, your face when you’re 27 is the same face as when you’re 25. The truth is, your face when you’re 25 is usually the same as when you’re 23. It changes sometime in the night when you’re 21.

Your face when you’re 20 is your face when you’re 18 is usually very close to your face when you’re 16. But when you audition for a 16-year-old when you’re 16, you lose the role to someone who’s 25.

You realize that all of those teenagers you watched in movies growing up were adults. They needed to be beautiful. They needed to be desired. Not awkward, growing, acne, baby fat cheeks.

That’s why you never looked like them. You wanted so badly to look like them.

Now 27 is too old for 25 and you spent your life waiting to look old enough to look young until you’re too old to look your age.

I lie. He can’t tell whether I’m 23-25-27 or whatever age at which a woman is disqualified.

I get the role. I meet the actor playing Hamlet. He’s 45. I meet the actress playing Hamlet’s mother, and she’s 30.

God forbid a woman looks like she was born before she gave birth.

Imagine if she looked like a mother.

Would Ophelia like to be a mother?

Would she have to look like one? With stretch marks and tired eyes from late nights nursing her baby?

Would she have to grow up?

Luckily for Ophelia, she drowns before she gets the chance.

Luckily for me, I still look young enough for the audience to care.

Ophelia and I leave behind a perfect corpse. And happily, because who leaves flowers at a grave with crows feet and smiles lines?

The play is a tragedy, so we don’t smile much, anyway. Luckily.

The people will cry because I’m worthy enough to die,

and happy Ophelia will never become too old to play herself.

—

Ophelia— a somewhat lazy poem I recently found buried in my notes app.

[solarpunkandtea]

Seeing Mother Mother in that list made me evaporate.

I hate how people will look at popular indie artists who had one or two songs go viral on TikTok and start making fun of anybody who listens to them. "Oh you listen to Lemon Demon, Will Wood, Jack Stauber, Glass Animals, and Mother Mother? Tsk, don't you know that is stupid TikTok neurodivergent white transmasc preteen music? It's so mid and bad you should listen to real music–" you are a pit of misery

[solarpunkandtea]

Many yesteryear ago I read a Supernatural fanfiction during the earlier seasons that slapped so hard I legit quit watching the show because I knew it would never measure up.

reblog if you’ve read fanfictions that are more professional, better written than some actual novels. I’m trying to see something

[solarpunkandtea]

I just found out that the author of an urban fantasy series I read is trans and that explains so much. The first book legit had happy gay dads and the lead didn’t make me want to eat my own eyeballs.

[solarpunkandtea]

Copy Right and Public Domain in 2024

Happy 2024 all! its also Public Domain Day! a magical holiday here in America where things enter the public domain. Works published in the year 1928 (or 95 years ago!) have entered the public domain, which means they belong to us, all of us, the public!

Mickey's Back!

Yes! I'm sure you've heard, but Mickey Mouse (and Minnie Mouse too) is entering the Public Domain today. This has been news for a few years and indeed Disney's lobbying in the late 1990s is why our copy right term is SO long. So what exactly is now public domain?

Most people know about Mickey's first appearance Steamboat Willie, but a second short film, Plane Crazy was also released in 1928 so will also be public domain. So what's public? well these two films first of all, you're allowed to play them, upload them to YouTube or whatever without paying Disney. In theory you'll be allowed to cut and sample them, have them playing in the background of your movie etc. Likewise in theory the image of Mickey and Minnie as they appear (thats important) in these films will be free to use as well as Mickey's character as he appears in these works will be free to use. Now Mickey's later and more famous appearance

will still be protected. Famously the Conan Doyle Estate claimed that Sherlock Holmes couldn't be nice, smile, or not hate women in works because they still held the copyright on the short stories where he first did those things even though 90% of Sherlock Holmes stories were public domain. It's very likely Disney will assert similar claims over Mickey, claiming much of his personality first appeared in works still copyrighted.

Finally there's copyright vs trademark. Copyright is total ownership of a piece of media and all the ideas that appear in it, copyright has a limited set term and expires. Trademark is more limited and only applies to things used to market and sell a product. You can have a Coke branded vending machine in your movie if you want, but it couldn't appear anywhere in the trailer for your movie as thats you marketing your movie.

Where trademark ends and copyright begins and how trademarked something in the public domain is allowed to be are all unsettled areas of law and clearly Disney in the last few years as been aggressively pushing its trademark not just to Mickey in general but Steamboat Willie Mickey in particular

Ultimately the legal rights and wrongs of this might not matter so much since few people have the money and legal resources of the Walt Disney corporation so they might manage to maintain a de facto copyright on Mickey through legal intimidation, but maybe not?

And Tigger Too!

All the talk about Mickey Mouse and Steamboat Willie has sadly overshadowed other MAJOR things entering the public domain today. Most people are aware Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain in 2022, but they might not realize his beloved friend Tigger didn't. Thats because Tigger didn't appear till A. A. Milne's second (and last) book of Pooh short stories, The House at Pooh Corner in 1928.

Much like Mickey Mouse only what appears in The House at Pooh Corner is public domain so the orange bouncy boy from the 1960s Disney cartoon is still on lock down. But the A. A. Milne original as illustrated by E. H. Shepard is free for you to use in fiction or art. His friend Winnie the Pooh has made a number of appearances since being freed, most notably in a horror movie, but also a Mint Mobile commercial so maybe Tigger too will have a lot of luck in the public domain.

Other works:

Peter Pan; or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up

Peter Pan is a strange case, even though the play was first mounted in 1904, and the novelization (Peter and Wendy) was published in 1911, The script for the play was not published till 1928 (confusing!) meaning while the novel as been public domain for years the play (which came first) hasn't been, but now it is and people are welcome to mount productions of it.

Millions of Cats

The oldest picture book still in print, did you own a copy growing up? (I did)

Lady Chatterley's Lover

The iconic porn novel that was at the center of a number of groundbreaking obscenity cases in the 1960s and helped establish your right to free speech.

All Quiet on the Western Front and The Threepenny Opera in their original German (but you can translate them if you want), The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie, and Orlando by Virginia Woolf will also be joining us in the public domain along with any and all plays, novels, and books published in 1928

for Films we have The Man Who Laughs who's iconic image inspired the Joker

Charlie Chaplin's The Circus, Buster Keaton's The Cameraman, Should Married Men Go Home? the first Laurel and Hardy movie, Lights of New York the first "all talking" movie, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Wind, as well as The Last Command and Street Angel the first films to win Oscars for Best Actor and Best Actress respectively will all be entering public domain

For Musical Compositions (more on that in a moment) we've got

Mack the Knife by Bertolt Brecht, Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love) by Cole Porter, Sonny Boy by George Gard DeSylva, Lew Brown & Ray Henderson, Empty Bed Blues by J. C. Johnson, and Makin’ Whoopee! by Gus Khan are some of the notables but any piece of music published in 1928 is covered

Any art work published in 1928, which might include works by Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keeffe, Alexej von Jawlensky, Edward Hopper, and André Kertész will enter the public domain, we are sure those that M. C. Escher's Tower of Babel will be in the public domain

Swan Song, Public Domain and recorded music

While most things are covered by the Copyright Act of 1976 as amended by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, none of the copyright acts covered recordings you see when American copyright law was first written recordings did not exist and so through its many amendings no one fixed this problem, movies were treated like plays and artwork, but recorded sound wasn't covered by any federal law. So all sound recordings from before 1972 were governed by a confusing mess of state level laws making it basically impossible to say what was public and what was under copyright. In 2017 Congress managed to do something right and passed the Music Modernization Act. Under the act all recordings from 1922 and before would enter the public domain in 2022. After taking a break for 2023, all sound recordings made in 1923 have entered the public domain today on January 1st 2024, these include.

Charleston by James P. Johnson

Yes! We Have No Bananas (recorded by a lot artists that year)

Who’s Sorry Now by Lewis James

Down Hearted Blues by Bessie Smith

Lawdy, Lawdy Blues by Ida Cox

Southern Blues and Moonshine Blues by Ma Rainey

That American Boy of Mine and Parade of the Wooden Soldiers by Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra

Dipper Mouth Blues and Froggie More by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, featuring Louis Armstrong

Bambalina by Ray Miller Orchestra

Swingin’ Down the Lane by Isham Jones Orchestra

Enjoy your public domain works!

[solarpunkandtea]

I splurged on a gift for the little this year. After a lot of reading, considering, and prepping for deals I got them one of those Toniebox toys. It’s basically an amiibo audio box for little kids. I was concerned because it was pretty expensive, and buying additional figures will also be expensive. Decided to bite the bullet because I’m big into alternatives to screen time and the little loves music and stories.

This thing freakin’ saved me. I got horribly ill Christmas Eve and was sick all day Christmas which, if you spend any time with toddlers, is a bad state to be in.

Little played with the toniebox all day! Dancing to the music, playing quietly while listening to stories ALL DAY while I died on the couch. I didn’t pay full price for this thing but frankly it’s paid for itself at this point.

If they could charge a little less for this thing it would be the perfect toy apparently.

[solarpunkandtea]

‘Tis the season.

[solarpunkandtea]

im so bad at maintaining online friendships!! im sorry to everyone i’ve had a lovely chat with but havent followed up with!! im a very isolating person and i still consider you my friend i promise !!!

[solarpunkandtea]