#presentation topic ideas

[lynzishell]

The Present 🧡 Chestnut Ridge

Prev // Next

Transcript below the cut:

Danny: Papa? Joseph: Hm? Danny: Do I have a grandma or grandpa?

Joseph: Uh, well, you do, that would be my parents, but they died before you were born. Danny: Oh. What were their names? Joseph: My dad was Luis, and my mom was Adriana. Danny: Did my mom have parents? Joseph: Of course. Unfortunately, I never met ‘em, so I don’t know anything about ‘em.

Joseph: What’s with all the questions today, anyway? Danny: We were supposed to do a family tree in class, but I couldn’t finish mine. Joseph: Your teacher won’t give you a low score for it, will she? Danny: No, she said it was okay, but that I should ask you.

Danny: So, is anyone in our family alive? Joseph: I have a brother, so he would be your uncle. He’s alive, he just lives far away. Danny: What’s his name? Joseph: Julian.

Danny: Does Julian have any kids? Joseph: No, no kids. Danny: Hm. I wish I had a brother. Joseph: …

Danny: Then I’d have someone to play with and we could— Joseph: Hey, Danny, how ‘bout you go feed Daisy and get washed up for supper while I finish up out here, okay? Danny: Okay.

[right-there-ride-on]

Gyjo in the fandom

cw: light discussion of ableism

Gyjo… what am I thinking about gyjo…

I like them. I like them a lot, actually. They have paralleled narrative arcs, they complement each other nicely, the romantic subtext is incredibly obvious to the point that even the most homophobic fan you know will admit they understand why people ship it… so why do I also have a problem with it?

There’s a lot of good fanart. Hell, I’ve reblogged plenty. Maybe it’s just something that’s more pronounced in fic.

I’m trying to word this correctly. My issue with gyjo has nothing to do with the text itself. I think my problem is just how people portray it in the fandom.

Maybe it’s because it’s so popular, or maybe it’s the sheer prominence of applying ‘Character A’ and ‘Character B’ dynamics without considerable regard for the characters involved, but I feel gyjo is very prone to flanderization. I believe the intersection with how ableist people are toward Johnny (intentionally or not, subtly or not) and the old tropes these two get shoved into makes it so I have trouble enjoying fics in the fandom.

I’m not saying it’s bad to enjoy certain tropes. I’m not saying headcanons are bad either. What I am saying is that writing is hard, but if you’re going to write fanfiction please have consideration for the characters you’re writing. The arcs of these two are complex and multilayered, which is why I think they have such staying power, but I also think they also provide a good opportunity for us as writers and artists to examine our biases when it comes to the portrayal of certain groups, personality types, mental illnesses, queerness, disability, etc. and maybe come out better people for it.

[gayness-and-mayhem]

I'm supposed to be doing a talk to some of my students in a couple of months about Star Trek and the origins of fanfiction, and I quite honestly don't know where tf to even start. If anyone has any idea suggestions/good places for me to do some more in depth research, I'd be really grateful, bc ngl, I'm slightly overwhelmed by the whole thing!

[mrkdicey]

Me:… damn… things have been feeling rough as of recent. No matter how hard I try to sort out these feelings and keep myself upbeat, something always ends up bringing me back to feeling miserable. I just wish-

Also me: What about Paintinoko?

Me:… what?

Also me: You know, the fanmade Noko variant that you made in college?

This guy?

Me: Oh yeah… yeah, they do kinda make feel better : )

[[BONUS ART]]

The Tsuchinoko

Tengu In Disguise

[brionysea]

the imaginary world where I actually write my stranger things fic ideas is so beautiful

[dottores]

day 2 of law school and i’ve already made an enemy.

[musical-chick-13]

I just am kind of :/ about the idea that "a poor depiction of [x serious topic] can NEVER be harmful, and NOTHING is inherently better or worse than anything else because ALL art is an EQUAL value of neutral." Because like. Y'all (rightfully) get up in arms about Bury Your Gays. Because that particular story patterns reflects a wider societal issue of queer people being seen as Less Important™ or More Disposable. Obviously you can grasp that sometimes things Come Across Really Badly and it's okay to complain about that.

No, killing off a gay character in a show in a hamfisted and narratively-stupid way isn't the same thing as an actual irl hate crime, that's. Ridiculous. But if, say, a woman hates the way women are portrayed through a shallow, misogynistic lens; or black people hate the way black characters are treated in 90% of mainstream stories; or trans people are tired of seeing so many examples of trans characters being A Punchline; or disabled people see yet another depiction of disabled life as An Unending Torturous Death Sentence That Will Rob Them Of The Ability To Be Happy Forever; or people are tired of graphic violence against marginalized characters that doesn't add anything to the story...they're not Doing Purity Culture for criticizing that? Like. They're allowed to be. Uncomfortable. About that.

[wannaliveattheholidayinn]

i can't totally speak on this because i haven't finished it or even watched most of it, but i know a lot of people find that fear street: prom queen being disconnected from sarah fier's curse disappointing, but tbh, i kinda like the idea. something about a town that believes so strongly in a curse that it starts inflicting it on itself. doesn't matter if the curse is real or not (and we know it is), but the towns impacted believing in it so deeply that it enacts it, even when the curse isn't at work. sunnyvale hurts shadyside, shadyside becomes murder capital usa. that doesn't just happen because of the curse killings, that happens because of the other incidents that make people believe the curse is at work

[thetardisisnotourdivision]

On the subject of the finale, I've seen many fanarts and fanfic comics and stuff with Eminath flirting, and while I ship them BIG TIME, I'm surprised by how many people portray Nathalie as the flirty one. Nathalie would absolutely do a Marinette if anyone ever tried to flirt with her. Half the time she probably wouldn't pick up on the fact that Emilie was flirting with her, and the other half of the time she'd just go bright red and stop speaking for at least five minutes. I mean come on this is Nathalie we're talking about - she's literally got "heartless" in her name and is canonically very very shy (and covers it up with the "heartless" exterior). Emilie is the flirt here.

[eyeballsoup7310]

Books about two sisters and a parent moving into an old house that part of the family used to live in, with a monoculture garden of flowers that refuse to die, walls infested with insects and bugs, and a spooky attic holding secrets, all of which slowly drives the three family members (particularly the parent who is obsessed with repairing the house) to peculiar obsessive habits and behavior, especially regarding food/drink, the main anchor to reality outside of the house being a rebellious and flirty teenager half-believing in the supernatural that the older sister has a crush on

[byexbyez]

I WAS ABOUT TO DO A PRESENTATION TO THE WHOLE FACULTY AND GUESS WHAT.

EARTHQUAKE.

[wonder-worker]

"The feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist being appointed as the day upon which the coronation of the king [Edward V] would take place without fail, all both hoped for and expected a season of prosperity for the kingdom."

— Excerpt from the Croyland Continuator / David Horspool, Richard III: A Ruler and Reputation

Even though Edward IV’s death was unexpected, after twelve years of peace there need not have been too much of a sense of foreboding about the succession. The great dynastic wound from which the Wars of the Roses had grown had not so much been healed as cauterized by the extinction of the House of Lancaster. There was no rush for London, as had happened in earlier, disputed successions. The royal party didn’t set out from Ludlow for ten days after hearing the news of Edward IV’s death, while Richard took his time, too. And the new king had [his mother the dowager queen and] two uncles to support him: his mother’s brother, the sophisticated, cultured, highly experienced Earl Rivers; and his father’s, the loyal and reliable Duke of Gloucester, to whom Edward IV had entrusted unprecedented power and vital military command.

... [Richard of Gloucester] had achieved his goal by a mixture of luck and ruthlessness, and if he made it appear, or even believed himself, that destiny played a part, this only made him a man in step with his times. Modern historians have no time for destiny, but sometimes the more ‘structuralist’ interpretations of the events surrounding the usurpation can come close to it. When we read that ‘the chances of preserving an unchallenged succession were . . . weakened by the estrangement of many of the rank-and-file nobility from . . . high politics, which was partly a consequence of the Wars of the Roses and partly of Edward IV’s own policies’, it is hard not to conclude that an unforeseeable turn of events is being recast as a predictable one. But without one overriding factor – the actions of Richard, Duke of Gloucester after he took the decision to make himself King Richard III – none of this could have happened. That is, when the same author concedes ‘Nor can we discount Richard’s own forceful character’, he is pitching it rather low*.

Edward IV had not left behind a factional fault line waiting to be shaken apart. Richard of Gloucester’s decision to usurp was a political earthquake that could not have been forecast on 9 April, when Edward died. After all, Simon Stallworth did not even anticipate it on 21 June, the day before Richard went public. We should be wary of allowing hindsight to give us more clairvoyance than the well-informed contemporary who had no idea ‘what schall happyne’. This is not to argue that Richard’s will alone allowed him to take the Crown. Clearly, the circumstances of a minority, the existence of powerful magnates with access to private forces, and the reasonably recent examples of resorts to violence and deposition of kings, made Richard’s path a more conceivable one. But Richard’s own tactics, his arrest of Rivers, Vaughan and Grey, the rounding up of Hastings and the bishops, relied on surprise. If men as close as these to the workings of high politics at a delicate juncture had no inkling of what might happen, the least historians can do is to reflect that uncertainty [...].

(*The author who Horspool is referencing and disagreeing with is Charles Ross)

[dumners]

Going on a lore dive on uesp and getting Mad

The hyperfixation is So Back my guys

[paradife-loft]

one of the other things about that fic actually, is it finally got me to nail down some stuff about what the deal is/was with Rivka's first master! ...even though like 95% of the relevant material got cut out of the final draft because it started wandering in an unhelpful direction, but shh.

anyway. Elanthe Pelaggia was, much like Rivka, a curious, stubborn, unconventionally-minded and intellectually voracious member of the Jedi Order who cared strongly about how to be an ethical person. she offered Rivka to become her apprentice in large part because she recognized a lot of those same traits between them, and saw the low-key shitty time Rivka was having trying to (not) conform to a more strict, authority-focused style of teaching for the more inexperienced members of the Order, and saw it as an opportunity to basically be the sort of adult she would've wanted in her own corner when she was younger. they hit it off pretty fabulously! Elanthe hadn't necessarily been super invested in the general idea of training a padawan beforehand, but in this particular case it was... something she genuinely enjoyed and felt proud of.

now. this only happened a couple years after the Treaty of Coruscant was signed. prior to the Treaty, Elanthe had been involved in Republic war efforts against the Sith just like any other Jedi. another couple years prior to cessation of active hostilities, she'd been placed with a unit of the Republic army, serving an infiltration & combat support role for their operations. one of those operations involved some search-and-destroy in Sith-held territory for critical infrastructure facilities supporting both their local war production and its associated Imperial settlements. Elanthe was essentially the one who went in first to scout for the exact targets they needed and their defenses, weaknesses, etc.

one of the places she was sent to scout on had, unknown to the Republic intel they were working from, fairly recently established a Sith training academy on-location to take advantage of its practical integration with Imperial military logistics. so in the process of infiltrating this military-target outpost for "how best destroy this place," she basically ends up walking into some dormitory housing for Sith teenagers. that, uh. that had not been included in the plan.

she also! gets discovered at this point by one of the Sith working at the outpost! who had noticed some funky shenanigans going on with security patrols/equipment/etc. and gone to figure out what was up. s h o c k i n g l y, they do not end up in a fight to the death, because Elanthe gets the absolute coldest of feet-popsicles about the mission and actively explains everything and offers to lie her ass off to the army because wtf she is deeply not ok with atomizing a school full of kids on top of whatever other civilian casualties they'd be inflicting.

so she does. and covertly sends updates/confirmation about the mission being scrapped to the Sith she encountered. she honestly wishes more people were more open-minded like this, had the opportunity to see what the war was costing regular people on the other side who were hardly monsters - yes even the kiddos being trained as future dark side assassins and shit. they're people too they didn't choose this any more than she chose to be a Jedi wheeeee treason is fun enrichment !!!

things move on, the war gets strangled into a close... Elanthe kind of maybe has an online penpal/friend who happens to be a Sith. again, open-mindedness; just because she doesn't personally agree with the Sith doesn't mean she agrees with the Jedi party line about converting or destroying all of them; the two factions aren't at war any more anyway.

several years later... being a Jedi and training a padawan in particular have gotten Elanthe a much more up-close view of some of the Cold War's proxy conflicts and attempts to covertly undermine the Sith than she had ever been expecting. she increasingly feels like she can't continue working for the Order, can't continue teaching a student to become another Jedi Knight who'll eventually get caught up in exactly the same hypocritical shit that's too entrenched for her to do anything about.

she doesn't really know how to leave. it's just... not something that's done. (she doesn't want to just toss Rivka back into the rest of the Order, either. the dilemma and guilt of it give her many sleepless nights.)

...her Sith friend offers, promises, the opportunity of a soft landing and support in the Empire, if she ever wants it. (and genuinely means it and has some capacity to follow through, ftr.)

[last straw breaking point event tbd happens]

and so she defects. spends a while of the planning of it trying to figure out a way she could even bring Rivka with her. there... really isn't one. not without their ultimately getting split up and Rivka tossed into the Sith academy meat grinder. even if she doesn't want to leave her to the rest of the Jedi, there'd be no kindness in forcing her to be trained as a Sith apprentice instead.

she says goodbye without really making it clear that's what she's doing. she doesn't leave any letters to explain, or tell Rivka anything about why. she reasons it's better to keep her as far away from any appearance of being corrupted by a dark Jedi traitor as is still possible, at this point. the only people she does lay things out (partially, very very partially) for, are the Council, via confession-style messages creating a (simplified, caricatured) narrative to swallow.

in the end though, it's all a pretty futile gesture with a significant cost that Elanthe's not around to pay.

[jemandrr]

Unironically, Ben Shapiro's greatest win against the left was turning left/centerleft laypeople off from the idea of a 'debate with facts and logic' because of his bad faith arguments. Like it's almost...triggering to people, and that leaves a lot of people with unsharpened ideas and an unwillingness to explain them in a rigorous manner.

One example phenomenon that this has fed into is a continuing degradation in the lines of thought people use to reach certain conclusions - so person A expresses opinion X that person B agrees with, but because person B never really sees the entire line of thought laid out by anyone else, their formulation of opinion X based on their own intuition might randomly lean on some idea Y which person A doesn't care about. As a result, if Idea Y lacks actual backing, person B might wrongly defend opinion X and give an impression that the entire thing is flimsy, or person B might lose their own footing and assuredness and change sides.

I also think that he so badly mangled the concept of debate in the casual public consciousness that it's a contributing factor to the vague anti-academic sentiment in recent years. (Which, while academia as an institution has problems, there's certainly an undercurrent of less directed discontent that is contributing to low public opinion of education as a whole - and a greater feeling expressed on social media that 'casual reference of marquee media' is in a way insulting to people who have not consumed it, rather than an invitation to partake or something you can pass by without caring. Not on tumblr though, where we see Dracula and then we read Dracula.)

tl;dr his pseudo-intellectualism meaningfully contributed to certain common sentiments of anti-intellectualism because of how badly and annoyingly he and the people who emulate(d) him did/do it.