#then do my part of a group assignment

[shaitaani]

Hi how are you doing

im fine but i have so much to do

[puppyeared]

Ouhhhh friendship I love friendship……..

[tiredstressedemotionalmess]

i havent had a assignment in school in almost a month. my last day of classes is this coming wednesday. i do not have to take any finals and i have straight A's. bearing all this in mind, tell me why THREE SEPARATE TEACHERS have decided to give us projects with LESS THAN A WEEK LEFT

[non-un-topo]

I'm in such a crappy mood because this panel discussion is on Wednesday and still not a single member of my group has contributed to anything (we're supposed to be posting and talking in a forum). Not even a hello except for one person who sent me a personal email at 12:30 last night apologizing because she didn't know there even was a forum. Honey are you telling me you haven't checked the online classroom at all over reading week + the weekend??? While you undoubtedly had other work that required you check the online classroom?? I actually just feel really sad. Just down and sad.

[vogelmeister]

i’m so fucking done with this group assignment

[music-for-them-asses]

Work is so stressful rn. I'm still struggling with my work assignment (because of the nature of the work, it can be very difficult to find answers for, or to even understand in layman's terms). I want to request a change to the other assignment team, but I know no one would want to switch with me (most people on my team have stated they don't like working these projects because they're difficult). And I'm the newest person here, so they kind of have seniority over me. But I'm honestly so exhausted with this work. I'm constantly asking for help, and I feel dumb because I should know this stuff by now.

[loverofallthingssmart]

just discovered one of my pet peeves is incompetency

[daisywords]

they should make a support group for people who love to sing but are cursed with mediocre voice

[sanstropfremir]

what do you think makes a well balanced group. your kepler ask mentions how skills and personality is important but is there a secret formula that you think is most potent. there are groups where each member is good at a specific thing, and groups where every member is equally skilled in dancing and singing. on one hand, if a group has the dynamic where everyone is equally skilled in all aspects it may make them lackluster. but would it be appropriate if say, 1 member is a weak dancer and the strongest vocalist and vice versa the same group has a strong dancer and weak vocal. maybe this dynamic would work in a small group, but not a large one? the trouble with large groups being, if all members have the same skills no one pays attention to them, or there will always be a standout member of a large group because realistically a group with 6 members and up cant be equally skilled with z e r o quirks or differences

well. this is kind of a multi-faceted answer, because although i don't think there's a specific 'secret formula' for a perfect group, kpop already has a structure that members get slotted into that actually does work. so yes, but also no? it's complicated.

so the whole system of assigned positions is essentially the formula that makes a well balanced group. that's literally the point of each of the positions; they're there in order to organize the roles so the group is balanced. now, do companies get it right all the time? no. do fans agree with it? absolutely not. but that IS what it's there for, and, in my opinion, it does work. most of the time. i think it's stupid and naive for fans to argue for equal line distribution yadda yadda because being a vocal is not going to be everyone's strong point. a main vocal SHOULD have the majority of the singing, that's their job. a main dancer SHOULD be leading dance breaks etc, that's their job. and an assigned centre SHOULD be in centre position, because they're there to be the hook. i've talked about how centre position is important before so i won't hash over that again, but my point is that those assigned positions aren't random, they're there in order to establish a balance within a group, so that people know what your place is. it's a job description.

however, those are just general positions, and obviously not every person and group has the same distribution of skills. what actually makes a balanced group is the people in that group understanding that they need to be balanced. no group is ever going to have the same interpersonal or skill related dynamics, but if all the members understand the parts they play and work together to fill in gaps and create a unified image, that's what makes the whole thing work.

of course this also feeds into my own personal beliefs about group composition, which i think are probably uncommon: i don't think there should be any large groups at all. five is the perfect size, seven is fine, nine is the MAXIMUM. groups larger than that have difficulty maintaining focal points and also have a higher likelihood of having filler members who may be able to keep up technically, but don't do much other than bolster numbers. everyone jokes about nct being too big, but the reality is that nct almost never promotes with more than nine members in a subunit, because sm intimately knows that if a group gets too big, it gets messy. you keep the member numbers down, and all those members have more of an equal reason to be there, even if it's not 'equal' in the songs or performances. there's a lot of other things that idols do that require different skills that aren't used in performance, and those are distributed differently depending on the group.

obvs none of these are hard and fast rules, and often a lot of groups settle into shapes that go beyond their 'job descriptions' and that's fine, because they're usually working through that together. it's all about negotiation

[loregoddess]

Birth by Sleep is actually the best game because you get to beat the shit out of Peter Pan

This is the funniest thing I could have learned about the game honestly. Here I am reeling in laughter bc the characters from TWEWY look so weird with 3D models, and I find out that I get to look forward to Peter Pan getting beaten up by Sora and Riku. Comedy gold.

[pallases]

i am once again regretting not reading dante’s inferno for ap lit like i was supposed to

[springcatalyst]

I've officially checked out for the semester which is a shame considering how finals are not yet done

[chanyoungies]

the urge to commit crimes

[yanqings]

Nah man this is beyond parody

[agentgreenbean]

art block is crazy why do i feel sick at the thought of picking up a camera again. like i so badly want to create something but the idea of actually doing it feels terrible

[celestial-kestrel]

It's that time of year again where Mari Lwyd starts to be talked about and shared around and an INCREDIBLY misleading post gets shared a lot. As someone who grew up with Mari Lwyd I wanted to clear some things up.

Also hello, if you are unaware who Mari Lwyd is. This is about the Welsh tradition of the horse skull who visits houses during the Christmas to New Years period in Wales asking for alcohol.

First off and probably the most important one:

Mari Lwyd is not a cryptid!

I can not emphasise this enough. She. Is. Not. A. Cryptid. There is no story or mystery about a ghost or zombie horse roaming the Welsh valleys. She's not even supposed to be a ghost or a zombie. It's just a horse skull on a stick with a guy under a sheet. She's a hobbyhorse and a folk character used to tell Welsh stories and keep songs alive. When people spread the misinformation that she's a cryptid, it's the equivalent of saying Kermit the Frog is a cryptid.

She is actually only one character in a wider cast of characters who go door to door or, in more modern times, pub to pub. The cast of characters can change town to town and village to village but there are some common ones I see time and time again. The Leader, the Merryman, The Jester and The Lady are just some I see regularly. Punch and Judy used to be more popular a few years ago but I haven't seen them in a while as their tradition has mostly fallen out of popularity. In most cases, almost the whole cast will be played by men. Even the characters are considered and referred to as female. Though this again depends and varies by which group is partaking in the Mari Lwyd tradition.

This point also goes onto my second point,

Mari Lwyd does not rap.

I think this comes from a very common misunderstanding of what rap is vs spoken word. Rap is a very specific style of music originating from the African American communities of the USA and has it's own structure and motifs unique to it. It's a lot more complex than people give it credit for as a style of music and just flippantly assign anything similar to it as being rap. If someone is talking fast or reciting poetry, it is not rap. Or anything that is an exchange of words between two people is not a rap battle. Mari Lwyd does not do rap, actually something that gets left out of these posts is the fact Mari Lwyd does not even speak. It's actually the Leader, who does all the speaking and song based banter between the house/pub owner for entry. Mari Lwyd just clicks her mouth, bites people and bobs her head around.

I think Mari Lwyd is a really beautiful and unique part of Welsh culture. She's not actually as wildly celebrated as a lot of the posts make her out to be. Actually, I think most Welsh people themselves learn about Mari Lwyd through the internet as well. Her popularity is increasing thanks to the drive of local groups wanting to keep the traditions alive and a renewed desire to document Welsh traditions before they're gone. Which is why it's such a shame that she's turned into something she's not to earn horror points on the internet. I think this is why it bothers me so much to see the misunderstandings of the culture and the folk tradition. Mari Lwyd's origin is very hot debated as well as how long it's been going on for. But I think it's thanks to a lot of traditions like this that the Welsh language and our stories weren't lost forever. Welsh culture is recovering as is the language. But it's still in a very fragile place. I think it's why it's important to document and correct information when it's spread.

Anyway, if you want to see the tradition in action, here's a lovely video from the Cwmafan RFC going to one of the pubs for charity. It includes the song exchange with the pub owner for entry and the whole pub singing and joining in once Mari Lwyd and the rest are inside.

As well with another video from St Fagan's showcasing the more traditional and door to door form with the larger cast.