#my maunderings

[ladytemeraire]

The main thought ringing in my head at the three-quarter mark of Jenny Nicholson's Star Wars Hotel video is how badly Disney missed the mark on not targeting the demographic of LARPers, cosplayers, and RenFest nerds as opposed to... whoever the hell they were actually targeting, with that combination of experience and price point.

Like. Not to further out myself as a massive goddamn dork, but there was a span of nearly ten years where I was going to the Ohio RenFest at least once a season, every season. And even there, the years where I went in some form of costume and played along with the actors as opposed to wearing jeans and a t-shirt, my experience was so much richer. There was such a different level of banter and playfulness and entertainment when I actively leaned into the immersion. I had so much fun interacting with the shopkeeps and cast members as an elf or random Fantasy Medieval Maiden, because they saw the costume and on some level went, "You! You are One Of Us!" and matched that energy, and thus gave me the chance to match it in return.

(One year, early on, when my "costume" was a frilly blouse, leggings, boots, elf ears, and a hastily sewn cloak, I had a random older gentleman run up to our group, press a gold coin into my palms, kiss the back of my hand in a very respectful and courtly manner, and disappear into the crowd. No context, no further story or plot or interaction, but almost fifteen years later I still have that gold coin on a shelf of tchotchkes.)

Watching every time Jenny tried so desperately to lean into the Galactic StarCruiser/overall Star Wars experience, to actively engage with the story and the characters, only to be lowkey ignored or actively rebuffed or scorned, legitimately broke my heart a little. (The bit in the experience finale where she was like "it felt like we were supposed to respond somehow, but I didn't because it was embarrassing, which is its own form of Force torture" was simultaneously hilarious and extremely relatable and incredibly sad.) Setting aside the issues with the app and tech, let alone the refusal to address legitimate complaints until she took to Twitter, not even getting a hint of reciprocal interaction from the actors when your choices supposedly matter in your overall experience would be so incredibly disheartening.

Ohio RenFest tickets were about $20 when I started going in high school, plus whatever food and merchandise you wanted to buy. Nowadays, even with inflation, they're still only $35 for adult tickets, which gets you access to everything, and you can absolutely get a full day's experience out of that with only the additional cost for food and beverages. I cannot fathom spending six thousand fecking dollars for two days ("two dollars per person per minute" will live rent free in my head for a while) on what is supposedly an immersive experience, marketed as living out your Star Wars story, only to get the absolute bare minimum in return. It really feels like such an indicator of how modern-day Disney is willing to cut corners as much as possible while leaning on brand recognition, and especially on nostalgia, in order to milk every last red cent out of their customers, until they run out of both money and goodwill. And that is so, so incredibly sad.

[miradelletarot]

Ughh this is gonna be a messy post, but I want to say some things that are on my heart rn.

First of all, this blog will always and forever support LGBTQIA+. No intentional erasure of any kind will happen here. I just want to make that clear.

All my life (despite a very Conservative, bigoted and r*cist upbringing with silent gen and boomer parents,) I have always fought to love everyone. To treat everyone the way I wanted to be treated. With love and respect.

I spent my whole life with a binary mindset, trying to understand and learn about all the different pronouns and identities. I still have a lot to learn and understand. I'm getting there. (And I hope you'll be patient with me as I continue to grow).

Now, here I sit, months after discovering my own demisexuality... And I'm straight. Talk about feeling like a round peg trying to fit thru a square hole. My identity means so much to me right now because it's belonged to everyone else for all these years. I was brainwashed into believing I had no autonomy. I'm finally in a place where I can reclaim what's been taken from me. (I won't go into how Christianity hurt me...but let's just say, I have a lot of trauma bc of my old faith that ties into a lot of this. I'd need to make an hr long video just to unpack it all.)

What's great is that I have been met with nothing less than love, respect, and kindness, welcomed with open arms without terms and conditions from this community. On and off Tumblr. More than I've experienced in any community ever. Even more so than the witchy/pagan community.

I guess I just want to say that I love y'all. A whole fucking lot. Thank you for making me feel seen. Thank you for your love.

And I hope it's ok to say this but... I'm excited as hell to celebrate this year's Pride month, no longer just as an ally...but as a part of the Ace community.

Thanks for giving this odd, funky-shaped peg a place to call home.

Happy Pride. 🏳️‍🌈

[bioluminescent-obscurity]

JUICE IS LAUNCHING ON 4/13

i might be late to the party but i just heard. that JUICE. the jupiter icy moons explorer. interplanetary spacecraft. is launching on the 13th of april this year. that's in just a few weeks

(and that's th. that's the homestuck day.)

if you haven't then please read 17776. you'll laugh. you'll cry. it'll change your life. especially if you're a blaseball enjoyer. 17776 is about sport in the same way blaseball is about sport. it's not about sport

[bluebeerg]

"Come to the Fun Home We take dead bodies every day of the week So, you've got no reason to roam Use the Bechdel Funeral Home"

Fun Home, Melbourne Theatre Company (2022)

Co-produced with Sydney Theatre Company [x]

[1] [x]

[terraclae]

If you're also doing the familiar bonding thing like me and are taking a break, let's just post what our fav familiars are right now, since we've been looking at them so much. Mine are these two.

[chromaenthusiast]

I had a dream that Warren the worm eagle broke into my house and tried to teach me how to play the Ukelele

I woke up absolutely terrified in a pool of my own sweat and everything. Also, I already know how to play the Ukelele

[roversrovers]

Like the many people in North America whose gaze will turn upward on April 8, Maunder was fascinated by the secrets of the sun and was determined to travel the globe and unlock them. She understood that the few minutes of darkness during a solar eclipse presented a special opportunity to explore the nature of the sun. Her observations led to our greater understanding of how our star affects Earth, but like so many early female scientists, her contributions and achievements have been forgotten.

. . .

She ended up with a number of photographs of the corona, and one of them is really fascinating. It's actually that last photo she took right as the eclipse was ending.  So you see the blotted out Sun, and then there's this long tendrils sneaking out from it all the way to the corner of the photograph. And it probably goes past the frame too, so this thing has gotta be millions of miles long.

. . .

Annie hypothesized that it was a stream of charged particles that was flowing out of these turbulent areas in the Sun, and physically interacting with the Earth. And this seems to just have been her intuition, you know, she knew the Sun really well, she'd been studying it for years at this point, and this was just sort of an educated guess. But she was essentially right. Today we know that these coronal rays are streams of charged particles. And what happens is they flow down Earth's magnetic field lines and slam into the atmosphere around the poles. And those collisions are what caused things like the Northern lights and those disturbances in Earth's magnetic field that can mess up communications and stuff.

. . .

[F]or a while, it was just back to ordinary life, back to observing the Sun at the Royal Observatory, but over the years to come, Annie chased eclipses all over the world. She went to Algeria, Mauritius, Canada, and she funded her own travels every single time, except for that final trip, even though at this point, her photos rivaled the ones that professionals were taking. . . . [S]he planned them meticulously in terms of the timing, the exposure. So they were really well done, really well thought through, and you can see a lot of features of the corona and the Sun surface come through in her pictures. When she was in Mauritius actually, she got one really cool one where you can see these plumes coming off the Sun's surface. And what made this especially interesting was that other people had taken similar photos at different points along the eclipse path, but every picture came out different. And what that showed was that the Sun wasn't just a smooth disc, which is what people had thought for a long time, it was this roiling turbulent place that was constantly changing.

[thewardenofwinter]

you know the new WIP brainrot bad when you pull up Pinterest and manage to add 200 pins on your first go 😔

i really really hope this fantasy project keeps the romance this time cuz the last fantasy romance projects i've TRIED to write, i end up forgetting about the romance part of it halfway and just end up killing off one of the love interests so i don't have to try to rewrite it in 💅

[foursidecity]

When your just a liiiiitrle creature

[peeporoon]

holy shit..... Dr. Maunder as pone..

[ladytemeraire]

Something I wish more subtitles/closed captions did was include tone indicators or dialogue tags. I'm not sure what the proper technical term is, but I sometimes wish you would see [through tears] or [furiously] or some other indication of the emotion that goes with the actual words being conveyed. If you're already indicating [quiet sobbing] before the quote, would it be too hard to indicate that the following dialogue occurs while the person is still actively crying? Especially if the captions are over B roll instead of footage of the person giving it.

[miradelletarot]

Based on a conversation I've seen come up a lot lately:

There is NOTHING WRONG with being vanilla. There is NOTHING WRONG with being monogamous. These are not things that need "fixing". Just like any other relationship and sexual preferences. You like what you like, and whatever you're comfortable with is OKAY!

I don't get why everyone gets so pressed about how someone else fucks another human.

Y'all need to calm down, mmk?

[bioluminescent-obscurity]

(flirty awakened merchant voice) you bi?

[bluebeerg]

"Your swanker and your bearing and the just-right clothes you're wearing Your short hair and your dungarees And your lace-up boots. I know you."

Fun Home, Melbourne Theatre Company (2022)

Co-produced with Sydney Theatre Company [x]

[x] [2]

[terraclae]

Thinking of getting rid of my Morgans which doesn’t really make any sense necessarily beyond “I really liked Fire emblem awakening”

Obviously credits to Rubeofkubic’s pairs because that’s where they all come from after all.

[yuhaosturtle]

never thought I'd see krist on my dash kissing a guy ever again yet here we are