#they are written for two different audiences with different purposes and different ingredients and they are both good!

[queenlucythevaliant]

Okay but I do get really tired when people rag on Narnia's Biblical parallels for being too overt. Like, yeah dude. It's written for kids. Most kids don't do subtlety. I knew my Bible better than probably 95% of third graders, and yet my parents still had to clue me in. I've talked to people who grew up secular and didn't realize Narnia was Christian until well into adulthood. The Christian parallels in Narnia are at a pretty perfect level for most kids, and the fact that we as adults continue to get new spiritual meaning from it as we grow is a real testament to the depth of Jack's writing.

[nostalgebraist]

declare

Read Declare by Tim Powers recently.

It had some really good individual bits, and was well-written throughout, but overall I found it kind of a slog.

Partly that was just due to pacing, or me not quite being in the target audience, or other similarly ordinary and boring reasons. But, on reflection, I think a lot of my troubles with the book come down to one big, uncommon flaw it had -- which is my reason for writing this post.

----

Declare is a hybrid fantasy/spy novel.

The spy stuff, which comprises most of the book by mass, is drawn from real history -- in particular, from the life of real Soviet spy Kim Philby -- and strives to be consistent with all particulars of that real history that are publicly known.

The book is a "secret history" as opposed to an "alternate history," intended to produce the impression: "for all we know, this really could have been what happened." It sticks to the historical record about the kind of matters that make it into said record, and only invents things in the blank spaces in between them.

As Powers put it:

I made it an ironclad rule that I could not change or disregard any of the recorded facts, nor rearrange any days of the calendar – and then I tried to figure out what momentous but unrecorded fact could explain them all.

You'll note that I'm being vague about what "the fantasy elements" are.

I'm doing that on purpose. Revealing much about their nature would be the kind of spoiler that actually spoils, because one of Declare's virtues -- and I really did admire this -- is the way it makes its fantastical secrets feel really secret. Like a secret doctrine, a mystery cult, an epistemic Rubicon that one does not cross lightly.

They are talked about elliptically, even among initiates (and Powers makes this feel naturalistic, not like cheap and pointless reader-teasing evasion). Before you know much else about these "fantasy elements," you know that encounters with them have a tendency to leave people scarred, broken, changed -- and disinclined to say much about what they saw.

The early chapters of the book almost feel like the opening of a "mundane" spy novel. Except they are dotted with stray glimpses, from odd angles, of... something else. Something that is clearly one single thing, with a coherent shape, only you cannot make out in full what that shape is. Something that feels, authentically, like it was not meant for your innocent eyes.

It's all very effective. Really great stuff.

But then, at least by the halfway mark if not earlier, the reader catches up with the characters. The shape of the thing comes into focus. You get what the deal is, insofar as anyone does, and insofar as there is a "deal" to get. The nature, if not the logic, of the hidden world is laid bare.

"The nature, if not the logic": this is the book's fundamental flaw. The fantasy elements of Declare eventually land in a worst-of-all-worlds no-man's-land between mystique and mechanism.

They are explained to the reader just enough that they lose their glamour; what initially feels like the mystic doctrine of a lost gospel, or the forbidden fruit of a Lovecraft story, ends up feeling more like a collection of "lore" passages accompanying tables of numbers in an RPG rulebook. Yet they are not explained enough that they make sense, the way a law-bound "magic system" makes sense; despite Powers' ambitions, they never quite become capable of explaining anything else.

To put the point a little differently, and set things up for my next one: Declare mixes together two ingredients which, on their own, are perfectly fine -- indeed, actively good -- but which absolutely cannot go together. Namely:

Mysterious, supernatural forces that feel properly mysterious, numinous, not quite bound by "our" human logic and thus fundamentally beyond our ken.

A secret-history version of bizarre and partially unknown real-world events, which supplies explanations for the weird parts and fills in the tantalizing gaps.

Why do historical mysteries draw our interest? It is not just that there is something we don't know. There are a lot of things we don't know, about history, and mostly they don't trouble us.

But there are some questions for which it does not seem possible to imagine an uninteresting answer.

When a real historical figure behaves in some bizarre manner -- as the real-world Kim Philby frequently did -- we know that, whatever cause moved them to do so, it must be outlandish in a way that matches its effect. When people act strangely, they do so for strange reasons. That is roughly what "acting strangely" means.

But! Once you allow "ineffable, partly unpredictable magic" to be a cause with effects, the link between interesting events and interesting causes is broken. You can now invent explanations which are less interesting than any real-world one could possibly be.

You can survey the historical record, note down all the intriguing gaps, and then sculpt an infinitely pliable magical putty into the precise shape of each gap, so as to fill it. These fillings do not have the shape of real things; they are made retrospectively, and modeled after the patterned obstructions marring our view, rather than the real patterns which are being obstructed. They do not have spiraling implications, as real things do; they plug the gaps they were made for, and do nothing else.

Human behavior has human causes, and human causes are frequently interesting, to us humans.

It is usually a virtue, in fictional depictions of magic, for that magic to feel nonhuman.

But it ceases to be a virtue when that magic goes on to become a substitute for the real human causes of real events. It provides answers to all our questions, at the cost of removing the reason we imagined we might want to possess those answers.

"Why on earth," you ask me, "did this bizarre historical event happen the way it did?"

And I respond: "a wizard did it."

You protest that this is not an explanation at all. You profess to be just as confused as you were at the outset.

You say, in exasperation: "it can't just be that. There has to be something more. Why did the wizard do it? Is it... the sort of thing that wizards do? Is there a 'sort of thing that wizards do'?"

In real life, you'd have a point. In real life, for every X, there is a sort of thing that Xs do.

But not for wizards. Remember #1 above? Wizards are beyond your ken. Perhaps there is "sort of thing they do," but if so, it is too subtle for your dull, unmagical brain.

Which is to say: they can do whatever the author, or the plot -- or the gaps in the historical record -- need them to do on any given occasion. And then they go back into their box again, until they need to be retrieved, in order to do something else entirely.

And worse: although the introduction of the wizard does not leave you any less puzzled, it frees you from caring that you are puzzled.

There is no longer the unscratched itch of an unsolved mystery about human behavior. You are not confused about a person, anymore, but about magic. And it is perfectly clear that you are never, ever going to understand magic. Your confusion is now expected, predictable. Everything is properly in order, as you can now see. You are free to go.

And yet somehow, you find, the book is not over. It will not be over for a while yet. You have other confusions, you see, which have not yet been stripped of their human interest and robbed of their allure.

(Not everything in Declare is like this, to be clear. I may be making too much of a few sore points in the plot, I guess. Still, there's no denying that I found the later parts of the book tedious, and this is at-least-sort-of why.)

[sneezemonster15]

What do you think about ppl like this https://sasukeyncoreblog.tumblr.com/post/686622642398183424

Hi.

What's there to say that I haven't said a hundred times before? The last comment made me smile. There is already a credible degree of obsession involved once you become a fan of a piece of art and write about it in an exclusive blog. It indicates a substantial level of commitment and effort, that you wouldn't just invest in something you didn't feel strongly about.

Sasuke and Naruto's love story finds its inspiration in Japanese Shakespeare (Chikamatsu), someone who idealizes the notion of romantic love in Japanese literature. Kishimoto's gargantuan effort in finding all kinds of romantic tropes found in literature, along with his maniacal obsession with making them visually and narratively compatible, using symbolism from South and East Asian mythology, all of it is evidence of his passion for Sasuke and Naruto's story. He has a persistent SNS brain rot himself. I have also discussed the cited interview before in a couple of my posts. It isn't really that difficult to put two and two together. heh.

The last comment in this thread made me think, it must be one of those fans who have their own unsubstantiated headcanons, for which they would easily dismiss glaring evidence of SNS. Meh, I can only snicker at them. What else can I be expected to think, looks like a case of sour grapes to me. And yes, those who deny SNS despite all the evidence are homophobic, directly or indirectly, whether they realize it or not. I don't expect a lot of emotional honesty from Naruto fandom, most of them aren't really aware that they are being emotionally dishonest with themselves, the extent of their denial is so far reaching, I can't really hope to hold an honest exchange of thoughts and opinions with them.

SNS inspires obsessive shipping. Full stop. If you understand the core ingredients of what makes SNS, SNS, if you really have that depth of feeling and understanding, if you are capable to feel what Kishimoto wanted you to feel, then you cannot be compared to shallow shippers and fans. Not all audience is alike. Godfather is an instant classic, one of the greatest films ever made, a masterclass in film theory. But one of my film buff friends fell asleep in the middle of watching it, it just wasn't her speed. Likewise, I usually like to watch Nolan's films but I fell asleep (twice, I tried twice and fell asleep both times) while watching his Batman trilogy. My ex, who happens to be a Batman obsessive themselves, haven't forgiven me for it yet.

So I understand not everyone gets SNS, the major themes that make their story so great. I appreciate it the way I do, because I come from a background where I have seen a hell lot of drama, romantic and otherwise, in films and literature and theatre. I am an art enthusiast, and as a former academic, I have written expansively on it. So, my context is different from a layman's context. I can identify things in it that most fans of a certain age and background can't, and I can't exactly blame them. My personal experience of life is also rich and diverse enough for me to appreciate SNS in a way that most others can't. If you don't know what you are looking at, you wouldn't understand why it is meaningful. But I can, and so can other fans such as me.

Understanding Naruto and Shippuden in its truest sense is a liability. It is a privilege and a curse. It's a boon and a burden. If one can get obsessive about literature such as Romeo and Juliet, then why not SNS, it's loads better than Romeo and Juliet. Yeah, I said it, and I stand by it.

I have said it before and for the purpose of this ask, I will say it again. If you ship Naruto and Sasuke for the right reasons, reasons that Kishimoto delineates himself, you believe in love for the right reasons. I am a childhood trauma survivor, and I really don't have time for shallow, superficial shit. I like substance and emotional heft in my stories. Kishimoto wrote his magnum opus with definitely this one thought in his mind, to write the greatest love story about two orphans in a conflicted world, a reflection of his own world, marred by the vagaries of war and loss and grief. Look at his interview that is mentioned in the thread, it is quite clear that his focus is on relationship and feelings. Love despite all odds. So intense and extreme and all consuming, that he is afraid people think of the boys as lunatics. He thinks perhaps they won't be able to get it, get the boys. He is aware how it looks to people who don't understand it. But he also knows that people who have experienced the stuff he writes about, they will understand. And they do. People who have survived childhood trauma, understand things about human condition that most people aren't able to, throughout their entire lives.

At the risk of being vulnerable, I would like to talk about what broke me first when watching Naruto the first time. No, it wasn't SNS. This scene. When little Gaara decides that if nobody loved him, he would love himself. Yeah, I had a breakdown after that. A very very deeply repressed memory came to surface. When I was a kid, entirely neglected and abhorred, I used to lock myself in my room, squash myself in a corner and imagine an adult me, rocking and hugging myself like a baby, while I wrapped my own arms around me, and telling myself that the adults in my life might not care, but the future adult me cares. So if they won't love me, I would love myself. That's how I used to comfort myself. Of course, later, it became kind of a part of my pathology, just like Gaara. Couldn't be helped. heh. But yeah, Kishimoto really put his finger on my most sensitive and deeply repressed nerves, he brought them out in the open and played them like a fucking harp, but it made the most haunting and beautiful melody so I stayed for the whole concert. Lol.

When I say their story isn't really age appropriate for its target group, I am not joshing, it really isn't. So I get that it's not for everyone. Maybe not even for adults who don't have that depth of emotions and understanding that this story requires. And it becomes clear that these are the same people who end up mischaracterizing both Sasuke's and Naruto's characters. It also helps that I have seen/read a lot of LGBTQ+ media, so the kind of tropes that I can identify in it, most others can't. Only the other day, I was talking to a friend of mine, he is an animehead. And even he doesn't get it. He also maintained that they were brothers and that Japanese media tends to depict male bonds as especially close, which is the case for Naruto and Sasuke, but that it isn't romantic. He compared them to Vegeta and Goku, sigh....

Now, he saw Naruto as a kid, so that's what he remembers. I could not keep it in at that point, I took my sweet time, but I proved him wrong. He still is resentful and doesn't completely agree, because he has this complex, whatever, as a long time Anime fan, in comparison, I have only been here a year. But he doesn't contradict me anymore. He knows his arguments will be stripped naked and spread to crumble in the sun, and good thing about him is that he defers to my critical evaluation.

But he is my friend and I care enough to invest in him. I can't do that for every Tom, Dick and Harry. But I do write a blog and when I am offered resistance to my posts, I don't react too much, unless the opportunist in me wants to make poor jokes, because what's it gonna accomplish? SNS is so in your face, that it takes a special brand of denial and homophobia to dismiss it. And I can give one all the technical reasons to prove it's a love story, but like I said, it really is about emotions. Feeling. If you can't feel it, you won't get it.

Perhaps some of these commenters also think either Sasuke or Naruto or both are straight? What can I say to that level of incomprehension? Maybe read more? Or live more? But that kind of advice should be coming to them from their mentors and therapists, not me.

In summation, Naruto and Shippuden aren't everyone's cup of tea. Those who scrunch their eyebrows at the obsessive passion that shippers show for SNS don't really get what makes SNS so damn special, and what exactly inspires such strong emotions in the shippers. It inspires an entire sea of emotions. And not everyone has the kind of mind or disposition to contain and process that kind of emotion. And I don't expect them to.

[absolutebl]

Hi,

Year 2020 in many ways introduced the World of BL to the global fans. I'm not saying prior to that BL didn't exist,...but the audience consuming the content were pretty lesser in number, and also a pretty niche audience for a sub-genre that was yet to grow.

In fact,...the success of many mediocre BLs like "TharnType" and "2gether" can be attributed to pandemic, lest they wouldn't have garnered the kind of attention they got. "TharnType" despite coming from an independent production company, survived and thrived because of it's raunchy content, and "2gether" because it was a product of GMMTV.

The point I'm trying to make is,...that when a BL series is announced, most of the time the project goes on floor, either immediately after the auditions are done, and the actors are selected. OR. They release the teaser to attract the attention of not just the audience, but the sponsors as well, and the BL is aired in a near or distant future.

I believe, most of the BLs that were aired in the year 2020, were shot in the year 2019. That's the reason, in the second-half of 2020, not much BLs were aired, barring a few from well-known production companies like GMMTV. 2021 was pretty good, in terms of the quantity of BLs being churned out by various production companies. While some of it got delayed, many of it got cancelled too.

Now,...when a BL series has created an impact in the minds of the audience, through social-media (either because of it's storyline, or because of the cast chosen) or because of some other controversy related to the series,...there is a 100% possibility that almost everyone awaits with bated breath for it to happen. Eg: "KinnPorsche" The Series., And, when a BL series is announced by a big production company like GMMTV,...no matter the delay,...it will happen for sure. Eg: "A Tale Of Thousand Stars".

Having said that,...there have been some BL series, especially from independent production companies, that just got cancelled or abandoned for reasons left for the audience to speculate. Neither the makers, nor the Authors ever came forward to clarify as to what exactly happened with the project, which is very upsetting, since it feels like they played with the audience emotions. And I'm not exaggerating here, because there are BL audience that connect themselves emotionally with a story or a character, and certainly look forward with expectation for a BL to happen if it's announced long back. Eg: "Triage" The Series.

Similarly,...I was really excited for "Motorcycle" The Series, because I really like one of the main lead, who apparently played P'Pha in "Gen Y" The Series, Season-2. But it's been two years, and there's no official announcement regarding this series. The other BL series that I have been forever waiting for is "Sexfriends" The Series. But it was cancelled too citing financial problems to be one of the main reason. Honestly,...I haven't read any novel of these BL series. In fact, I'm not even sure if it's based on a novel, or it's a freshly written story for the purpose of making it a series.

There are apparently tons of Thai BL series that never saw the light of the day after it was announced.

So,...my question to you is,...

If makers are unsure whether a BL series will happen or otherwise, why do they announce it in first place?

BL isn't a sub-genre anymore, but it still has a long way to go in comparison to the main Entertainment industry. Keeping that in mind,...what are the necessary ingredients for the success of a BL series? [Here I'm asking from the standpoint of a maker of the BL. As in what is required prior to announcing a BL series?]

Will the whole concept of BL series adapted from a novel change in the future? [Which means,...will independent filmmakers dare make a BL which isn't based on a novel?]

Apart from differences of opinions between the maker(s) & the author(s), financial issues, or casting problems. What are the other reasons for delay or complete abandonment of a project? ["Motive Village" can be a prime example in this regard with respect to "2 Moons 3".]

Thanks!

xoxo

Arjuna

So I'm pretty sure I've tackled a lot of this in my my various posts on the Thai BL so I'm gonna be quick...

well, quick for me.

Ah Motorcycle, when was that one announced? 2019? Flipping heck. 

1. If makers are unsure whether a BL series will happen or otherwise, why do they announce it in first place?

Thai trailers are usually fund raising mechanism to get interest from backers, sponsors, and distributors. That’s why they work they way they do. They aren’t really for fans at all, except that fan excitement puts pressure on backers. The majority of the Thai studio system seems based on this. (Not GMMTV, of course but...) 

They simply don’t use trailers the way we do. In Thailand a trailer is more like a pitch proposal. 

2. BL isn't a sub-genre anymore, but it still has a long way to go in comparison to the main Entertainment industry. Keeping that in mind,...what are the necessary ingredients for the success of a BL series? [Here I'm asking from the standpoint of a maker of the BL. As in what is required prior to announcing a BL series?]

Depends on the country. 

Korea’s BL formula seems to be: 

(1 short idol X 1 tall actor) + 1 established director / Kdrama length = mildly successful

roll for chemistry 

+20 on chemistry? = hugely successful 

-10 damage for difficult script 

extra idol = +10 charisma points 

actor has done BL before? roll for additional hits

Hey now, I think I’m HILARIOUS.

Look this is a bit like asking why some Hollywood tent polls are successful and others just aren’t. Tent polls are all pretty darn formulaic (e.g. Marvel) but also difficult to get right (e.g. DC). You can have everything on point from cast to funding to (even) script and it’ll still flop. And then something comparatively low budget and market challenged (for high heat/language/violence reasons) like Daredevil, is a runaway hit. 

(side eyes Cutie Pie.) 

Film is art and art in unpredictable. 

Like anything else my best take is that it would be difficult to fail with: 

good cast, 

decent directing, 

solid script, 

high production values.

But I wouldn’t put it past them, or the fans.  

As Hollywood, let alone GMMTV, is constantly proving to us the above 4 step formula is damn near impossible to get right. (Mostly because BL always forgets about #3.) 

3. Will the whole concept of BL series adapted from a novel change in the future? [Which means,...will independent filmmakers dare make a BL which isn't based on a novel?]

Thailand is running out of y-novels, hence the rise of the pulps. 

Either they gotta go original (like My Ride) or they are going to need to pull from other country’s traditions (e.g. Love Stage, Meow). Probubly mostly Japan. Japan is rolling in two decades of yaoi. They go nothing but content they aren't using. 

Otherwise i really have no idea what Thailand is going to do. I mean I know what I would do. A shit ton of classic stories (like Bad Buddy did Romeo and Juliet) just gay (and BLed). That seems easiest. No IP to shell out for. 

No matter what, we are entering a really interesting stage for Thai BL, especially with Korea’s intent to dominate. 

4. Apart from differences of opinions between the maker(s) & the author(s), financial issues, or casting problems. What are the other reasons for delay or complete abandonment of a project? ["Motive Village" can be a prime example in this regard with respect to "2 Moons 3".]

There’s My Engineer 2 to consider too. 

I honestly don’t know. I can guess mostly lack of funding. But the root question is to why aren't they managing to raise interest from backers and sponsors? That’s pure speculation. 

Unwillingness of talent (or talent reps) to work with a company with a bad reputation (black balling). In the case of places like Motive, this kind of thing is usually an indication of chronic mismanagement on a business level, but it could also indicate corruption, abuse or power, and/or extremely difficult personalities (usually top down). 

Never discount the manifold ability of the people in power to monumentally fuck up. A lot of people, especially in the entertainment industry, are straight up bad at their jobs. (And I use the word straight intentionally.) Or have been given responsibility for some aspect of production for which they are neither qualified nor naturally talented. 

A director, for example, my be a VERY good director, but an absolutely GHASTLY project manager or fundraiser. 

[alecmagnuslwb]

Double Trouble

Read on AO3

Zatanna blinks hard praying that there’s some sort of backlash from the spell making her see double. But when her vision clears after a series of rapid blinks her eyelashes sticking together from the movement there’s no change to the view before her.

When she had yelled ‘ylpitlum’ casting her hands out at the dagger John had thrown at the beast before her she wasn’t prepared for the beast to use its last moments of breath before a dozen daggers pierced its skin to send a reverb of magic right back her way. John had grabbed her jumping in front of her and guarding her body with his own at the last second taking the hit instead.

And now, well now she’s dealing with this.

“I’m not sure if this is a nightmare or a fantasy for me,” Zatanna says looking at the two Constantine’s before her both sporting that same sardonic smile she’s fallen for over and over again. Her eyes flit between the two of them spotting no differences, they are exact copies of one another.

“Please say fantasy,” the John to her right says. He steps towards her at the same time as the one to her left. They both reach out to cup her cheek.

“Are you alright, luv?” the one to her left says running his thumb under her eye lightly. The one on the right looks annoyed that he beat him to asking, so he steps back patting down his pockets looking for his cigarettes.

“I’m fine,” she says watching as the one John lights his cigarette and the other keeps his eyes trained on her. “You’re the one who seems to not be.”

“Eh,” the one smoking says. He pauses taking a drag and shrugging his shoulders. “I mean I’ve been worse.”

Zatanna squints one eye and tilts her head in thought. He’s not technically wrong, he’s had way worse spells blast upon him, at least he’s still got all of his limbs attached. Double the limbs, really.

She pulls back from the John closest to her, his hand dropping from her face. She grabs him by the sleeve and drags him to stand beside smoking John. She situates them both standing perfectly beside one another and pulls the cigarette from the one’s mouth as he makes a grumbling protest that she ignores.

“Don’t move an inch,” she says stepping back a few feet from them. She raises her hands focusing her magic on the two identical men before her.

“Nruter meht ot eno,” she says and a burst of blue and yellow magic leaves her fingertips cascading over both John’s, she watches as it combines together between them and then, nothing, absolutely nothing happens. She huffs in frustration as the sparks fall to the ground, no change whatsoever.

“Well it kinda tickled,” left John says, it’s his turn to pull out his pack of cigarettes. He lights two handing one to his other self who nods in thanks before holding it out to her.

“You seem stressed,” he says with a cheeky smile. “It might take off the edge.” The other John nods in agreement.

Zatanna rolls her eyes and walks over to the pair. She takes the offered cigarette and flicks it across the room while never breaking eye contact with him.

“Hey,” he says watching forlornly as it goes, landing in a puddle and flickering out. The other John chuckles taking a long drag and purposely blowing the smoke in the direction of his other self.

Zatanna snatches his away too, just because. He stops chuckling frowning as she crushes it out beneath her heel.

“I don’t understand. That should have worked,” she says focusing back on the issue at hand.

Right John is the first to speak up.

“Maybe it’s cause we’re different essences, ya know,” he says gesturing a hand between the two identical versions of himself. “He’s my good side, I’m the bad side, or something like that.”

Zatanna scrunches up her nose at the theory. It would be possible, there’s plenty of spells like that out there in the world, but they’re behaving far too alike for that.

“No your both being equally as annoying, I don’t think it’s a good side versus evil side situation,” she says placing her hands on her hips. They both smirk at her evaluation, proving they’re definitely the same John just duplicated.

She looks down at her hands playing a bit of colorful magic over them with a sigh.

“Whatever that thing did, it used my magic against me, which means my magic isn’t going to fix it,” she sighs again, just once she’d like some mission of theirs to go off without a hitch. Just once. She raises her arms pulling up a portal and pushing both of them through.

They pour out into the room the house of mystery has decided is a potion room and a library today. Both John’s move to take off their trench coats and Zatanna stops the one closest to her.

“Nope, the only way I’m gonna be able to tell the difference is if one of you keeps on the coat,” she says. The one with his coat already off smirks at the other one as he pushes the sleeves of his white shirt up to his elbows, loosening his tie a bit more.

The one still in his coat huffs and throws himself into a chair as the other situates himself on an empty table still smirking. Zatanna ignores them both heading to the bookshelves and pulling every book she finds that could have a solution. She tosses one at each of the Constantine’s, hitting the one sprawling across the desk a little hard in the stomach which cause him to let out a little ‘oof’ sound.

“Read. Find a potion or something that’ll put you back together,” she says placing a stack on another small desk and sitting down. She immediately starts going through them, dogearing a few that might work, or could be combined for best results.

It only takes about twenty minutes of reading before one of the John’s speaks up with a suggestion she knew one of them was bound to make eventually.

“You know there is one surefire type of magic to recenter auras and rejoin selves,” trench coat Constantine says tilting his head her way. The other one lying on the desk lifts himself up with a wicked little smile that already has her rolling her eyes.

“He’s right,” he says flipping himself so that he’s basically straddling the desk facing her way. “Ta-“ he starts and Zatanna immediately shoots him down.

“If you say tantric sex magic I will throw you both in a pocket dimension,” she says glaring at them both. They pout in response, the same puppy dog eyes he tries to give whenever he wants something pointed at her from two angles. It’s not working today though.  

“But it would probably work. Our magic with yours always yields excellent and intense results,” trench coat says shutting the book he was reading. “Plus, it’s fun.” Their faces light up with equally as hopeful looks.

“Yeah it might,” she says and they smile. “But, I’m far too annoyed with both of you already for that, so guzzling down a no doubt terrible tasting potion is what you’re going to get,” she says with a sunny smile. Their own smiles drop and hers grows.

They both grumble going back to their books as she does the same. It only takes a few minutes for her to work out a solution, she gets up flitting around the room for ingredients and combining a few spells together specific to her magic, the beasts and a few outside sources. She catches both of the John’s watching her as she moves, the flow of her coattails trailing behind her and the glow of magic tickling at her fingertips. It’s good to know no matter how many of him there are, he’s a captive audience when she’s around.

She spoons the mixture, a sludgy black and green thing, into two vials and corks them. She turns tossing a vial to each of them that they both easily catch one handed.

“Drink these simultaneously and yas eseht sdrow after,” she says flashing her hand across the space in front of her. The enochian words they’ll need to say appear in smoky clouds lingering for them to read.

They both come to stand beside the hovering words, uncorking their vials.

No coat Constantine pauses before he lifts it to his lips as the other him sniffs it with a grimace.

“You sure you don’t want to try the sex magic?” he asks her with a little smile on his lips. The other John’s head perks up with the same small smile.

Zatanna snorts out a little laugh. “Maybe some other time,” she says with a wink. She’s not lying under the right circumstances where she wasn’t so tired and annoyed, she might be down for the idea.

Both John’s chuckle. “We’ll hold you to that,” they say in unison before tipping their vials together in a toast and tossing them back. They read the words still written above and immediately the spell starts to work.

They both lift off the ground a little, a bright white blinding light encapsulating them both. Zatanna shields her eyes, lifting her arm when the light fades. Standing there where there was once two of him, is one John Constantine, trench coat askew, hair a mess, the wholly original genuine article.

“So about that maybe some other time,” he says, poorly straightening his tie. Zatanna picks up a paperback from behind her and throws it at his chest in response.

[thesublemon]

on reviewing

Watched a documentary on Pauline Kael a couple nights ago. It clarified for me why I always find her reviewing refreshing and frustrating by turns. Refreshing because she doesn’t tend to treat genre or subject matter as something sacred. She will watch many kinds of movies with the same degree of curiosity and judgment. Her instincts about whether a movie is working, or lying, or doing something new are also often very on point.

But she falls prey to the two big things that I think make reviewing a flawed, sometimes maybe even useless endeavor. Especially if the goal is to accurately describe what a work is.

1) An inability, or disinterest, in modeling why artistic choices work or don’t. For instance, at one point in the documentary she complains about artists and critics equating repetition with lyricism, and states that repetition in movies simply annoys her because it feels like belaboring a point that she’s already gotten. But that complaint misses out on an opportunity to explore why people would think that repetition is lyrical, or why an artist would reach for it as a choice. And whether, once you’ve modeled what the goal of repetition actually is, maybe there are good and bad versions. If it were me, I would argue that when repetition is good, it doesn’t actually feel like repetition. It feels like riffing. The artistic impact comes not from reiteration, but from reframing—and if it does feel like reiteration, then it’s probably weak repetition. If I were to make a similar complaint about a movie, I might instead complain that a motif did not add or gain complexity each time it appeared. Or I might complain that an attempt to convey monotony by unchanging repetition did not feel worth it, because I didn’t find the underlying point insightful enough to justify the experience of slog. Whatever my exact argument though, the point is that there would be a curiosity and emphasis on what the artist was trying to accomplish. And a generosity about what they could accomplish. As well as a self-awareness about my own values (like “density” and “coherence”) and the fact that I judge works by those values. Without this sort of meta-level mindset, reviews seem to quickly descend into authoritative subjectivity. Kael was good at viciously panning things, but how can a pan help the artist make better work unless it’s accompanied by some sort of model or rationale? Why would an artist listen to your opinion unless you first prove that you understand what they were trying to do? Without a level that exists outside of the reviewer, a review runs the risk of simply being an exhortation to appeal to that reviewer’s taste.

2) A love of saying things that sound good, regardless of whether they’re actually meaningful. At one point in the documentary, Renata Adler, another writer, attempts a takedown of Kael. But ends up making the exact mistake that Kael does.

RENATA ADLER: [Kael] has, in principle, four things she likes: frissons of horror; physical violence depicted in explicit detail; sex scenes, so long as they have an ingredient of cruelty and involve partners who know each other either casually or under perverse circumstances; and fantasies of invasion by, or subjugation of or by, apes, pods, teens, bodysnatchers, and extraterrestrials.

Compare to Kael’s own style of evisceration. Here’s her on The Sound of Music.

PAULINE KAEL: What is it that makes millions of people buy and like THE SOUND OF MUSIC—a tribute to "freshness" that is so mechanically engineered, so shrewdly calculated that the background music rises, the already soft focus blurs and melts, and, upon the instant, you can hear all those noses blowing in the theatre? […] And the phenomenon at the center of the monetary phenomenon? Julie Andrews, with the clean, scrubbed look and the unyieldingly high spirits; the good sport who makes the best of everything; the girl who's so unquestionably good that she carries this one dimension like a shield. […] Wasn't there perhaps one little Von Trapp who didn't want to sing his head off, or who screamed that he wouldn't act out little glockenspiel routines for Papa's party guests, or who got nervous and threw up if he had to get on a stage?

Having read both pieces, I think both writers identify something true about their subject (Adler even makes remarks similar to what I’ve already said). But are the pieces useful? Or accurate in a more total sort of way? Kael had particular kinds of movies she loved, it’s true, and tended to be bad at self-criticism about whether her preferences actually indicated any sort of objective reality. But Adler’s criticism of Kael is no more interested in modeling than Kael’s reviews are. It isn’t interested in an evenhanded consideration of what Kael gets right and wrong and why. What unites Adler’s takedown of Kael and Kael’s takedown of The Sound of Music is that they want to be takedowns. They want to be stylistically rollicking reads that create the aesthetic experience of nailing something to a wall. But the thing about wanting too badly to make an argument “aesthetic” is that it becomes tempting to gloss over anything that would ruin the aesthetic flow. Adler devotes a long paragraph to identifying all of Kael’s tics, and the wall of text is certainly rhetorically effective at making you feel like Kael is some sort of dirty-minded one trick pony. But at the end of the day, it’s rhetoric. Not really argument. Similarly, Kael is so delighted to be able to use phrases like “glockenspiel routines”, that it gets in the way of saying anything more considered. Which isn’t to imply that I think the writers don’t actually believe what they’re saying. On the contrary, I think they hold their opinions powerfully and sincerely, and are trying to identify something wrong in their culture by singling out and drilling down on the sins of one thing in particular. But nonetheless, by caring so much about being good bits of writing—and they are good bits of writing; there’s something juicy and relentless about Kael that sticks with you—they end up empty on the level of argument.

These two failure modes highlight the central problem of reviewing, I think. Which is that reviews tend to be three things at once: ekphrasis, analysis and evaluation (which implies some sort of rubric of quality, whether personal, cultural, or “objective”). This is partly understandable, given that art is an abstract, experiential thing and therefore difficult to evaluate or analyze without some degree of ekphrastic description. It if was easy to say what a work was doing, the artist wouldn’t have needed to make art of it in the first place. So it makes sense that the process of making a work legible enough to opine on would have to trade in artistry itself. It makes sense that in order to show an audience what a work feels like, a review would have to poetically reproduce that feeling. Similar to the way that the translator of a poem needs to be a good poet themselves in order to make the meaning and experience of a poem accessible to an audience in a different language.

The problem is that ekphrasis, being expressive, is also necessarily subjective, and not primarily concerned with logic. Which on its own, is perfectly fine. I’ve written a ton of ekphrasis on this blog. I’m pretty pro-ekphrasis. When it’s done right, there isn’t much like a bulls-eye poetic description of a work to make you feel like you get it on a level you didn’t before. But when that sort of writing is also trying to say whether or not a work is “good”, the expressiveness frequently gets in the way. It’s easy to state or promote an opinion expressively. It’s harder to defend an opinion that way. In good faith, anyhow. Which results in all of these reviews that succeed in observing true or true-feeling things about art, and do so in a sometimes deliciously readable way, but don’t leave me with the feeling that the writer has any consistent or defensible take on how art works. I can’t help thinking that I much prefer reading writing about art that keeps its purpose siloed. So either a piece that tries to poetically explain how a work affected them, or an academic work that tries to argue for an interpretation, or something more philosophical that puts forth a theory of what makes things good and bad and explain why a work does or doesn’t live up to that. I don’t want this to be the case. I think writing that can blend those three modes together is some of the best possible writing about art. But the average reviewer is not really up to the task, despite the fact that the review is probably the most common and widely-read type of writing about art.

(None of which is to say that I’m free of sin these regards. One of the reasons I try to keep the tone of this blog casual is because I want to be able to be able to play with these different modes of writing about art. And see where and when and how I can get away with blending them. It’s a practice space.)

[lovejirahmae16]

5 Essential Ways to Evaluate Language Use in Media

 Each medium has its own ‘language’ or ‘grammar’ that works to convey meaning in a unique way. ‘Language’ in this sense means the technical and symbolic ingredients or codes and conventions that media and information professionals may select and use in an effort to communicate ideas, information and knowledge. While the medium may affect how messages are received, the users’/audiences’ own background/experience may also affect the interpretation of messages. An important first step in becoming media and information literate is to understand how information, ideas and meaning are communicated through and by various media and other information providers, such as libraries, archives, museums and the Internet. (UNAOC, 2020)

DEFINITION OF TERMS

GRAMMAR

           The systematic study and description of language is called Grammar. A set of rules dealing with Syntax and word structure of language. In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics.

REGISTER

           According to Nordquist (2018), a register is defined as the way a speaker uses language differently in different circumstances - determined by factors as social occasion, context, purpose, and audience - determine the vocabulary, structure, and some grammar in one’s writing and even in one’s oral discourse 

1.      Frozen - it refers to historic language or communication that is intended to remain unchanged, like a constitution or a prayer. Examples: The Holy Bible, The United States Constitution, The Bhagavad Gita, and Romeo and Juliet

2.      Formal - is used in professional, academic, or legal settings where communication is expected to be respectful, uninterrupted, and restrained. Slang is never used and contractions are rare. Examples: a TED talk, a business presentation, the Encyclopedia Brittanica, and Gray’s Anatomy by Henry Gray

3.      Consultative - is used in conversation when they are speaking with someone who has specialized knowledge or who is offering advice. Tone is often respectful (use of courtesy titles), but may be more casual if the relationship is longstanding or friendly. Examples: the local TV news broadcast, an annual physical examination, a service provider like a plumber

4.      Casual - is used when they are with friends, close acquaintances and co-workers, and family. Examples: a birthday party, a backyard BBQ

5.       Intimate - is reserved for special occasions, usually between only two people and often in private Examples: an inside joke between two college friends or a word whispered in a lover’s ear 

Language registers are classified as:

1. Formal Language Register - is more appropriate for professional writing and letters to a boss or a stranger - is impersonal, meaning, it is not written for a specific person and without emotion

2. Informal Language Register - is conversational and appropriate when writing to friends and people you know very well.

STYLISTICS

Stylistics is a branch of applied linguistics concerned with the study of style in texts, especially, but not exclusively, in literary works. Also called literary linguistics, stylistics focuses on the figures, tropes, and other rhetorical devices used to provide variety and a distinctness to someone's writing. It is linguistic analysis plus literary criticism.

PRAGMATICS

 Pragmatics is a branch of linguistics concerned with the use of language in social contexts and the ways people produce and comprehend meanings through language. The term pragmatics was coined in the 1930s by psychologist and philosopher Charles Morris. Pragmatics was developed as a subfield of linguistics in the 1970s.

SEMIOTICS

Defines as a general philosophical theory of signs and symbols that deals especially with their function in both artificially constructed and natural languages and comprises syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics

DISCUSSION

TYPES OF MEDIA

Print Media

According to the International Encyclopedia of Political Communication “Print media are traditional mass media published on paper. The concept not only includes the published products but also regards the organizational context shaping the journalistic routines and norms behind the printed products. It mainly comprises of newspapers and magazines. News magazines also serve an information function, whereas most other magazines are more committed to entertainment and leisure.

Here are ways to evaluate this type of media:

Registers

Newspaper, educational books and other magazines uses formal register, while leisure books and some magazines use casual to formal register.

Stylistics

Newspaper and educational books follow a certain standard upon publishing and they use formal writing.

Grammar

Kress abd van Leeuween stated that there is a trend in which, increasingly, the written text is no longer structured by linguistic means, through verbal connectors, and verbal cohesive devices, just a special arrangement of block of text. Writer writes their message to expressed not only linguistically, but also through a visual arrangement of marks on a page.

Semiotics

Print Media also contain images as well as text, and those images contains hidden meaning from its color to the lines. As signs, both sensory icons and textual symbols are mere meaningless marks unless and until they acquire meaning through the addition of semantic content, i.e., the relations between signs and the things they stand for. Semiotics helps us to understand deeply and somewhat fully the world of signs and symbols.

Pragmatics

Journalist and editors have been discovering and then using new ways of expression and addressing the public. It makes up a large proportion that people read and hear every day. How tabloid newspapers use language in a projection of their assumed readers' speech is how they construct their own images and their relationships to an unseen, unknown audience.

Visual Media

Visual Media is defined as the sources of data or information in the form of visual representation. It is commonly used in learning that uses pictures, videos, and infographics that is proven to be a creative and one of the best ways for a child learning.

Here are ways to evaluate this type of media:

Register

For movies and television, visual media uses almost all of the registers depending on the role of the actor they wanted to portray. News uses formal register while advertisement uses casual.

Stylistics

Media uses different effects that enables observer to analyse the structure of media messages without ignoring the interpretative processes of the audience.

Grammar

The actor/speaker of the video shows relevant function of speech acts. All of these functions are present hierarchically in every act if verbal communication, therefore determining the verbal structure of the messages is elaborated.

Semiotics

Producers embed meanings and signs that is for the audience to interpret and received, and most of the time, the meanings are hidden and is only visible for an observant eye. The kind of signs that are likely to cross our mind immediately are those which we routinely refer to as ‘signs’ in everyday life, like religious signs, road signs, and public utility signs.

Pragmatics

Visual media focuses on the viewers that they are able to see the subject’s body language, gestures, and hear their intonations is a big factor to understand the information easily.

Electronic Broadcasting Media

Electronic Broadcasting Media is the media that one can share on any electronic device for the audiences viewing, unlike static media (Printing) electronic media is broadcasted to the wider community. They may include television, radio, Internet, fax, CD-ROMs, DVD, and any other medium that requires electricity or digital encoding of information. There is a wide range of Electronic media that broadcast a variety of different things like advertisements and promotions.

Here are ways to evaluate this type of media:

Register

An example of the electronic broadcasting media is Commentaries on Live Events. Often constructed partly as a conversation between the commentator and summarizer, separated by the (often longer) passages of commentary. Register will be stylized, specialized, professional, colloquial. Thus, the register used in this type of Electronic Broadcasting Media is formal or consultative depending on the content.

Stylistics

A study of Bell (1991) looked at the style of language used in radio news broadcasts in New Zealand. “Single news-readers heard on two different stations showed a remarkable and consistent ability to make considerable style shifts to suit the audience … only the audience correlated with these shifts … In mass communication, a broadcaster’s individual style is routinely subordinated to a shared station style whose character can only be explained in term of its target audience” (Bell, 1991).

Grammar

Electronic Broadcasting Media requires the six C’s. Clear-- simple, understandable, express NOT impress. Concise-- get to the main point Conversational ―for the ear. Current-- timely copy in content and sound.  Correct --free of factual errors, spelling & grammar. A commentary will use the special lexis and jargon of the sport/event in question. Simple and undemanding vocabulary, typical of speech.

However, in news programs, the goal is to give the listeners a lot of information in a very short time. Therefore, the news has to be worded in a way that it is easy to understand and to follow. News language has to be absolutely concise and neutral. And since the aim is to convey a maximum of information in a minimum amount of time, there is no room for literary style in the news.

Semiotics

In TV and radio news, the neutral tone of anchormen is a sign that implies the myth of performer and news `organization that he represents. In the top headlines at first, the political news then economic news is read, thus the hierarchy of announcement of news implies connotation. TV function as a sign system is the result of the interaction between different sign systems. Television uses two mediums, visual (text, fixed and moving images) and audio media (speech, silence, music and environmental sounds). Thus, TV news codes are concluded of language codes (written and spoken), image codes (fixed and moving), code of silence, music codes and codes of environmental sounds (sound segment), paralanguage spoken and written codes, codes of aspect, gesture codes and codes of hand and facial gestures. Radio is an audio media, so in order to identify the end of a news and the beginning of the next; the news is read by two speakers, men and women, respectively, which implies the end of a news story and start the next. After the latest headlines, there is short music again. Also, the music of starting detailed news is a sign that calls the audience's attention and implies the importance of the program, and also implies the end of headlines and starting of detailed news.

Pragmatics

Commentaries also make extensive use of the names of the participants, especially in team games, usually by last name only (Dyer, Shearer, Van Meir, Philips) - the commentator may have given the full name at the start, but the audience is expected to know them well enough anyway.

Sometimes, historical facts are given, perhaps as a mark of respect and the use of the names also has relevance to pragmatics since the audience knows not only that, say, Philips is Kevin Philips but that in this match he is playing at his club ground (he was a Sunderland player in 1999) and also that he is a forward, so that mention of his name suggests where the action is happening on the pitch.

Outdoor Media

Any advertising that is done outdoors that publicizes a business’ products or services is considered to be outdoor advertising. Businesses utilize outdoor advertising for many reasons, the biggest being location. Not only does this method of advertising allow you to select exactly where your ads will be, it provides guaranteed access to the audience, sometimes as often as every day. 

Here are ways to evaluate this type of media:

Register

Marketing on social media sites tends to lean more towards an informal register, focusing on a younger demographic that prefers a more casual tone. There is even evidence to suggest that it is precisely this shift towards digital communication that has led to the increased use of informal language.

Stylistics

Copywriters deploy different sentence types to achieve different effects. For instance, periodic sentences are used to create suspense. Periodic sentences raise curiosity in the readers as they want to know exactly what the advertisement is taking about. Advertising copywriters also inject life into their messages by deploying figurative language. Figurative expressions tend to beautify language by making it appealing and evocative.

Grammar

One of the characteristics of human language is that it is rule-governed. Every language has a limited set of rules which its users apply recursively to produce an unlimited number of novel sentences. Whenever the rules are violated ungrammatical sentences are produced. Advertising copywriters pay greater attention to reaching their audience than to constructing grammatical sentences. To achieve their aim of communicating messages that can be read at a glance, they deliberately violate the grammatical rules of the language of the advertisement.

Semiotics

Given that advertising could function as an expression or reinforcement of ideology, semiotics’ analysis occupies a significant place within the framework of encoding and decoding adverts’ messages. Regarding encoding, it allows advertisers to deliver meaningful messages, associating the product with consumers’ lives and values. Considering the decoding process, semiotics provides the tools of study the hidden meanings of advertisements through analyzing verbal and non-verbal signs.

Pragmatics

certain word formations are peculiar to the language of advertising because the goal of the profession is to send advertising messages across in the shortest time and space available. Since time and space are of much importance in billboard advertising, it uses a lot of short and jerky sentences, positive, comparative and superlative degrees, figurative expressions; modifiers, appeals and deviant structures to create beauty and effectiveness around the advertised products or services. As a specialist area, advertising has its own specialized language. It tends to have unique word choice and syntactic structures which enable the copywriters to capture the attention of the audience within seconds.

Transit Media

Transit media refers to advertising placed in, on, or around modes of public transportation: buses, subways, and taxis. It is a great way to reach a really diverse audience: families traveling, professionals, etc.

Here are ways to evaluate this type of media:

Register

Transit media uses formal to casual register of language depending on the kind of advertisment is shown.

Stylistics

There has been a trend in recent years to which transit media switches from formal to informal, friendly mode of communication between businesses and consumers.

Grammar    

Subtle cultural nuances and social contexts need to be considered when localizing any text, particularly those destined for marketing use.

Semiotics

Transit media prefer to engage with shorter, easy to digest advertising. They don’t really use symbolism since people don’t have enough time to think through because it is on transportation.

Pragmatics

Transit media follows a level of formality is appropriate for their new target audience, and how will the marketing strategy be adapted to each new environment.

Digital Media

Digital media is any form of media that uses electronic devices for distribution. This form of media can be created, viewed, modified and distributed via electronic devices. Digital media is commonly used software, video games, videos, websites, social media, and online advertising. 

Here are ways to evaluate this type of media:

Register

Twitter is neither homogenously “conversation-like” nor “written like” in style. That is, twitter content can differ in formality depending on the community and underlying communication type. Thus, the language register used in the Digital Media is informal, more on consultative or casual registers.

Stylistics

 Users of the digital media make much greater use of twitter hashtags to label their posts.  This points to a more careful use of the posts and a curatorial intent, where hashtags serve to direct a tweet to the right audience when author and readers do not know each other. More instances of exclamations and questions, and more non-standard strings of exclamation and question marks. The abundance of exclamations suggests the messages are more likely to be strongly emotive. Emotions of one kind are also suggested by the number of messages or status posted on social media.

Grammar

Just as the digital media alters the usage of our language, so, too, does it introduce new usage of grammar and vocabulary. With the need for quick and succinct language and communications online, full verb phrases have become common acronyms that are now used in everyday settings and not just online. 

Semiotics

Digital Media contents create different meanings through signs, symbols, text, images, graphics, and color. For example, Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996)   states, visual communication can be expressed through different uses of color or different   compositional structures.  Hèléne states that, “Visuals are used not only to illustrate   news and feature genres but also in advertising and campaigns that attempt to persuade   their target audiences to change attitudes and behaviours”. Advertisements are   supposed to evoke emotions.  Hèléne also states that, “Visuals are thought to  send people   along  emotive pathways  where  textual/verbal  material leaves  them  in a  more  rational,   logical  and  linear pathway  of  thought” (2008).  Viewers  will interpret  the  advertisement   according to  their  own life  experiences.  Kress and  Van  Leeuwen (1996)  state,  “Visual   structures  realize  meanings as  linguistic  structures do  also,  and thereby  point  to different   interpretations  of experience  and  different forms  of  social interactions”

Pragmatics

 In the digital media, sending text messages or chats mirrors a great change in language, specially pragmatics. The advent of social network communication has changed the way people speak and write English drastically. These electronic networks have allowed the users to conduct electronic communication in different styles that is formal and informal and use many types of electronic communication such chats, posts, tweets, comments and discussions. Electronic networks acronyms are one of the most remarkable features, which save time, space and energy. So, successful communication requires awareness of the pragmatic functions of the acronyms used in social network conversations.

CONCLUSION

The importance of media is incomparable that it undoubtedly made our lives convenient and different. Many of us have already encountered and have used the different media mentioned above, but this paper is for the further exploration and explanation for the future generation who wanted to learn more about the media linguistically.  

 REFERENCES:

Reham M. Khalifa (2015). International Journal of English Language and Linguistics Research Vol.3, No.4, pp.37-49. http://www.eajournals.org/wp-content/uploads/Pragmatic-Functions-of-Social-Networks-Acronyms.pdf

Paris, C. et. al., (2005). Differences in Language and Style Between Two Social Media Communities. file:///C:/Users/Acer/Downloads/4626-21996-1-PB.pdf

Maryam M. (2007). A Comparative Study of Semiotics in Radio & TV News. International Journal on Studies in English Language and Literature (IJSELL) Volume 5, Issue 1, January 2017, PP 61-65. https://www.arcjournals.org/pdfs/ijsell/v5-i1/8.pdf

Eruchalu, G. (2015). AN ANALYSIS OF THE LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF BILLBOARD ADVERTISING IN NIGERIA. http://www.jmel.com.ng/index.php/jmel/article/viewFile/50/49

Mohd, F. (2019). The Role of Semiotics in Advertising: Communicative Approach. http://languageinindia.com/feb2019/faizansemioticsmarketing.pdf

Albion Languages. (2020). Registers, which is Suitable for Marketing Materials. Albion.

Baron, N. (2000). Alphabet to email: How written English evolved and where it's heading. New York: Routledge.

           Mkhize, V. (1993). The spoken and the written word: stylistic creation in Black broadcasting. http://ukzn-dspace.ukzn.ac.za/handle/10413/

           AB  Print. (2017). why is print media important. AB print group ltd.

           Eilders,  C. (2016). Print media. wiley online library.

           Gagnon,  E. M. (2019). THE IMPORTANCE OF VISUAL MEDIA. GrandPR.

           Mellinger-Bean,  B. (2018). introduction of print media. bizfluent.

           Naushahi,  A. (n.d.). importance of print media. daily times.

           Naveed,  F. (2012). mass communication talk. masscomm.

           Taylor,  B. M. (2015). Media Grammar. pressbooks.

           Thummy,  F. A. (2017). Semiotic analysis of media content. grin.

           Weebly.  (2018). MIL Intensive Teacher Training. Visual Media and Information.

 AUTHORS:

DIASANTA, JIRAHMAE

MARAYA, MARIBETH

MARGATE, CAMILLE ROSE

[mst3kproject]

802: The Leech Woman - Part I

I tend to get all social-justice-y on this blog, so it will probably come as a surprise to you that I kinda like this movie.  I won’t pretend for a moment that The Leech Woman is not stupid and offensive, but something about it absolutely fascinates me.

Dr. Paul Talbot, an endocrinologist, is searching for a cure for Old.  This is at least partly because it will make him ludicrously rich, but also because his wife June has turned forty and he’s no longer attracted to her.  An old woman, Malla, tells the Talbots that her people, the Nando, know the secret of renewed youth.  They therefore follow her to Fake Africa where they learn that the Cure for Old has two ingredients: the pollen of a rare orchid, and a human pineal gland, scooped from a still-living brain.  Is June willing to commit murder in order to be young and beautiful again?  You bet your sweet booty she is!

I was kind of surprised when my word processor didn’t underline ‘Nando’.  I googled it, and apparently Nando’s is a South African restaurant famous for their ‘Peri-Peri Chicken.’  You learn something every day.

This movie is gross on so many levels.  It hates everybody.  Its ‘Africans’ are primitive mystics in loincloths and skull headdresses, its women are domineering and predatory, its men abusers, criminals, and dull-ass ciphers. I hardly know where to start.  In fact, the badness of The Leech Woman is so complex and pervasive that I think we’ve got another multi-part series here.  In this review, I’m going to talk about the characters.  Next week, I’ll go on to other stuff.

The Leech Woman is, of course, not the first movie I’ve watched in which there is no hero… but I’m not just talking about this being another film in which the so-called ‘hero’ doesn’t do anything.  This is more like The Amazing Transparent Man in that there is literally nobody in the film who can be described as ‘good’.  It’s not a movie about good overcoming evil, it’s a movie about evil destroying itself.  That’s probably part of the reason why I find it so interesting, as it’s an unusual way to approach a narrative, and The Leech Woman shows an astonishing amount of commitment to it.  We’ve seen a number of movies on MST3K where the good guys really aren’t important but there’s still somebody, usually a dull cop or reporter, who theoretically fills that role.  The Leech Woman doesn’t even have one of those.

Let’s take a look at our cast, shall we?  We’ve basically got six important characters: Paul and June Talbot, David the jungle guide, Malla, Neil the lawyer, and Neil’s fiancée Sally.  I think I’ll start with the men.  They’re all terrible.

The first character who speaks is Paul, and the first thing he says is to insult his wife, sneering at her about her drinking.  The conversation that follows tells us not only that they hate each other, but that Paul seems to have married June primarily so he could experiment on her, and is pissed that she doesn’t want to let him.  Then while June is hurt, drunk, and vulnerable, he goes from insulting her to fawning over her, softening her up so that he can return to emotionally abusing her later.  When, on the trip to Africa, she accuses him of ignoring her, he tells her she’s imagining it.  He’s also deeply unprofessional at work, insulting and scoffing at Malla when she’s there in response to his request for research subjects.

Of course, Paul is a villain in this story.  We’re glad to see him go, and the nice irony of him not living to see June rejuvenated is one of the few things The Leech Woman does right.  His detestable traits are so cartoonishly overblown, though, that it’s really hard to take him seriously as a character.  Paul comes across more than anything else as a plot device, a necessary stepping stone for June to come into contact with the Nando and their youth pollen.  Once he’s served that purpose he’s no longer needed.  Nobody misses him, and June never shows the slightest trace of regret, immediately attaching herself to David instead.

David starts off seeming like a slightly better person than Paul, since he treats June like a human being and attempts to offer her some actual comfort after she fights with her husband.  Then he goes steadily downhill.  He steals the youth pollen and the ring at a moment when he should be worrying about them getting out of there alive, and then when June ages again, he not only refuses to give them to her, he runs away.  I guess he’s supposed to do this because he realizes he’s the only person around she could tap for pineal juice, but at this point we have no evidence that she’s willing to do that.  She didn’t even watch while the Nando killed Paul.  Instead, it looks for all the world like David runs because he’s physically repulsed by her, or because he’s afraid she’s going to infect him with Old.

Finally, there’s Neil.  I think we’re supposed to like Neil… I think we’re supposed to see him as a nice guy destroyed by a scheming woman, but the truth is that Neil destroys himself.  The moment he sees young June, in her disguise as ‘Terri’, come up to him, he throws all decency out the window and practically follows her around drooling for the rest of the movie.  When his fiancée points out, understandably, that this is unacceptable behaviour, he treats her exactly as Paul had treated June, telling her that she’s imagining things. All these things stack up against us liking Neil, and he displays no redeeming qualities to offset then… in fact, other than being easily led by his dick, he has no qualities at all.  He’s a cardboard cutout with ‘handsome guy’ written on it.

Of course, none of these men are a point-of-view character in the story. The Leech Woman is a story about women, so how about them?  Well, unsurprisingly they’re terrible too.  Malla uses the Talbots to get her back to Africa and then tries to have them killed, and clearly has no problem with the whole ‘a man must die to make her young’ thing.  The Nando as a culture are used to this idea, but Malla didn’t grow up with that – she was raised in the west, where people would definitely not be okay with it.  If the men were shown to be willing sacrifices this might not be quite so bad (although it still wouldn’t be okay), but no, the guy we see is struggling as he’s held down and drugged.

As for Sally, the movie evidently wants us to think she’s a nagging harpy.  It doesn’t quite succeed, because of the way Neil drools after ‘Terri’. Sally has every right to be worried, impatient, and annoyed, especially when he brushes off her concerns the way he does.  Instead, what’s terrible about Sally is the way she offhandedly threatens Neil (“you better not try anything like that if you want to stay in one piece”) and seems to view him as a possession rather than a partner.  When he admits he prefers ‘Terri’, Sally’s plan is to send this woman away until she and Neil can marry, as if signing his name to the paperwork means he can never escape from her again.  He belongs to her now.  She has a receipt.

I assume that Neil and Sally met through Paul, but until the point where they turn up at the airport, we never see them together and have no indication they know each other exists. The impression I get is that the Bride of Neil was originally going to be a different character, but they couldn't afford another actress.

Then there’s June.  The Leech Woman is obviously her story – she’s in almost every scene, and is the one with a bit of a character arc.  It’s possible that we see Paul as unsubtly evil and Sally as a paranoid bitch because that’s how June sees them.  If anybody’s the protagonist, it’s her, but she is never, ever likable even in a villainous sort of way. We root for her to destroy Paul because we hate him too, but everything she does is awful and like the other characters, she doesn’t have any good characteristics to offset it.

When we first meet her, she’s a self-pitying drunk. She is so badly-treated by Paul that by the time it looks like she’s going to have him killed and run off with David, we’re all for it.  Then her downhill spiral begins as she murders David for his pineal.  This is supposed to be a surprise and a demonstration that June is irredeemable, and it works as far as it goes, but it leaves us with no interest in her affair with Neil.  We don’t root for them to get together because it’s obviously impossible, and we cannot believe that this is some great tragic love when they’ve only just met. It’s just a couple of selfish idiots being selfish idiots.

After the way Paul has treated June, we understand why she enjoys seeing men doing her bidding.  She’s always been ignored and disregarded, so she derives great joy from being able to make people pay attention.  She uses beauty to wrap Neil around her little finger, and wealth to do the same to the would-be robber.  She knows she’s ruining Neil’s life by seducing him as ‘Terri’, and she seems positively gleeful about that.  The problem is that she’s not really trying to accomplish anything through this manipulation.  She has no long-term plan, it’s just all-out hedonism, and when she finds herself cornered, she commits suicide.  June never learns anything from any of this, and nobody else learns anything from her. At the end, she’s just pointlessly destroyed a number of lives, including her own, and it’s hard to say what the audience is supposed to take from that.

And man, that’s just the dramatis personae!  I have way more to complain about in The Leech Woman, so stay tuned.  Next week I’ll be back in SJW mode with a vengeance.  See you then!

[applecherry108]

first of all hooooooooolyyyy shiitttt

FUCK tungle. it took like 30 tries to log in on desktop. admittedly, i was using the wrong password at first, BUT, even when i remembered the right one it kept giving me shit. This is what i get for being L337 i guess... -_-

anyways, im only on desktop so i can add a readmore to say:

i just,,,,,hate voltron. okay? It sucked. it fucking sucked. i watched the first season and it was like, okay yeah, this has potential. and then s2 was like, okay yeah not as good but maybe s3 will pick up...

s3 didn’t pick up. it was just one long death spiral by the same idiots who fucked up the atla sequel. i hate their writing, i hate their story plots, i hate how they butcher any good ideas they have, and i especially hate their inability to have good character AND plot development happen at the same time.

I got swept up in storm of klance and that’s about it. i have soft spots for other ships but at the end of the day i don’t care. i just don.t fucking,,, care???

the fandom is a mess, the crew was a mess, everything was a fucking mess from the get go.

Like who tf is this show written for?? it has to be for like, 8-10 year olds. It has to be. Everything is just so....stupid. Nothing is ever properly explained, motivations never really given, everyone is just a 2 dimensional cardboard cutout of a trope. And that pisses me off so much bc like??? other shows aimed at young kids can still have great world building. they can have good world building and characters and overall story and still be cheesy and a lil dumb. cheesy and a lil dumb is completely fine!! but voltron is just so...godammn... BORING!! it’s like i WANT to like the characters but its just so goddamn hard when everybody is so fucking flat. by all rights, i should want to marry allura. shes everything i loved when i was little, from her color pallet to her princesshood to her white fucking hair!! i should LOVE allura but i don’t!! i kind of hate her. why?? i don’t know!! shes so...boring! and flat! and fucking PASSIVE! everything in this show lands so fucking flat holy shit.

pidge at matts “grave”? yikes, that was second hand hard to watch for like.... “oooh this is so serious!” but the buildup wasnt there...it was kind of funny tbh... and HELLA awkward...

don’t get me started on lance and hunk. bolin was my favorite look character for the first few episodes and then he got knocked to Comic Relief and had maybe two (2) importantish moments. he/they may be part of the main cast but they’re not main characters. they feel like background props to the Actual Main characters.

which brings me to keith.

FUCK keith.

that’s my reaction after every! new! season!! is just,, FUCK keith. god the show functioned SO WELL without him. he’s just so...idk. i also don’t care. what was his character arc anyway? it SHOULD have been about learning to love and trust others but we only get that in lip service and speed run character development (i hate the quantum abyss...so much... like yeah, who cares about SHOWING our characters mature, let’s just tell that it happened in afucking montage.) if keith were a properly developed character he shouldve remained PASSIONATE and idk, run support?? that boy SHOULD have piloted red, end of story. period. keith doesn’t need to lead he needs to learn to TRUST others and that insludes trusting other WITH HIS LIFE. i won’t rant about how we should have had black paladin lance, but keith should have never ever been black paladin. even after he “matures” he still sucks at. he’s this awful,,little,, Shiro 2.0. and I hate it. i ahte it and i hate shiro just a little bit. even though he was arguably the most likeable character, he shouldve stayed dead. or missing. or whatever. he didn’t need to come back and they didnt need to make keith a little offbrand clone of him. i ESPECIALLY hate that they aged keith up 2 years for no goddamn reason other than to make him the Adult (tm). keith’s dedication to others was gre4at, but it should have, and im failing for this word here so forgive me, climaxed? cresscendo’d? whatever. /resulted/ in him playing support. not leader. lone wolf keith doesn’t need how to lead his pack, he needed to learn to HELP his pack. to be a TEAM PLAYER. he didn’t want the responsibility of leading bc guess what?? some people hate leading!! there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be support! keith’s entire arc is a huge mess of missed opportunities and a grand illustration that he is lm’s and jds’ favorite, just like fucking mako.

i won’t rant about mako, but just know i fucking hate him and the special treatment he gets, and good LORD does keith take over mako. keith isn’t space zuko he’s space mako and it fucking SHOWS.

okay, i’m losing steam here, but like.... so apple, why tf where u voltron 24/7 if you hated it so much? because homestuck was over and i needed a new hyperfixation. and i really had to force it for vld tbh. and at the end of the day, it wasn’t so much about the show itself as the potential of klance (or sheith, up until s3). between the interviews, the coding, the fucking EVERYTHING--it really felt like it could be canon. i knew in my heart it was queer baiting but i had HOPE dammit. hope that this could be killer representation, hope that these characters would delvelopment into something incredible. again, there was so much POTENTIAL. and all of it was wasted. everything really came to a head during the fucking game show episode. it was like lm and lds giving everyone who likes lance the middle finger, really driving home that “no no, he IS just stupid. he’s the comic releif. there’s nothing deeper about him and no one will stand up for him bc they all think of him as such.” and that just....broke my heart. we were so...SO close to lance actually mattering but nope! bolin’d again! and what was his purpose in s8? why to be an accessory to allura of course!

i’ve seen a lot of people really divorce themselves from canon and live solely for fanon, esp fanon klance but like.... i can’t. i just can’t. it’s so fucking hard to work with these cardboard characters. you can only draw so much depth onto them, you know? until the very last moments they had potential, but then it all got snuffed out. but who cares about canon? why bother with it? because! we don’t have a solid consistent fanon version of them! no one sat down and delivered the ten commandments of “here’s what we agree k and l are actually like” it’s stupid and it sucks because everyone has their own little differences and its so so tiring to basically be interacting with minutely different ocs all the goddamn time. canon matters bc it gives everyone the same base to work with. like a cooking showing with the same basket ingredients, but now it’s like.... ya’ll don’t wanna use the mandatory ingredients (and why would you? those canon ingredients are like, a century egg and spoiled sardines, they’re awful.)

okay, and im at work and just came back to this and dont remember my train of thought so like... what really threw all this into sharp clarity was the recent steven universe episodes. they were so...GOOD. so fucking good. so much plot and foreshadowing coming to a head. it was such a wonderfully satisfying payoff that it made me remember what a GOOD show is like, how vld is so very very /bad/. the difference is fucking striking. where one is an intricately woven tale with excellent character development and clear story AND character arcs, that can progress AT THE SAME TIME, one is a hacked together flaming dumpster firing that constantly falls flat and doesn’t know where its going or why. and it s so BORING! like fight scenes can be amazing! they can be well coreographed and tense! and we as the audience can be anxious about the outcome! and vld just wasn’t that! it was boring repetetive action in the least exciting way. and where su set up a lot of potential, holy shit they DELIVERED on that potential. not just for rep, but for characters! for story! for plain ol simple character interactions! and then, again, two dimensional cardboard cutouts.

and now with this difference in good vs bad show so very clearly highlighted for me, i just.... i can’t, anymore, with vld. it sucks. it sucked and i can’t pretend or force a fixation with it that just isn’t there, and truthfully, probably never was. maybe that’s why i’ve been struggling to finish my fic, struggling ever since i posted the last chapter, ever since s7, which, again, that game show was really the nail in the coffin as far as holding onto any hope that this tire fire would ever pick up. like a physically feel ill trying to finishing this stupid fic bc i don’t care so hard. i don’t care and i just... really want to be over it. im sick of seeing it everywhere, im sick of the drama, of the Discourse. like all fandoms have their issues, but hold fuck does vld fandom have a massive Purity problem. like, god, let people ship whatever. who cares. die mad about it.

like homestuck, idk if i’ll ever fully ween myself off vld but i want to move on. i want to enjoy Other Things without having this lackluster weight on my shoulders. and more than anything, i want to stop feeling like im obligated to like the same shit as i did two years ago, or last year, or hell, last week! feel free to unfollow, but yeah i just.... really needed to let this out in a proper post and not in the misc tags somewhere.

[howardschatzphotography]

On Seeing, A Journal. #282 Above and Beyond. Playwright, John Guare. December 4th, 2018

The cast of my ongoing project Above and Beyond was joined, recently – and perhaps fittingly – by the great American playwright John Guare. He is best known for his plays “Six Degrees of Separation,” “The House of Blue Leaves,” and “Landscape of the Body.” Guare, born in New York City, is now 80 years old, and says he wrote his first play when he was 11. His style, which mixes comic invention with an acute sense of the failure of human relations and aspirations, is at once cruel and deeply compassionate. Guare’s plays have won every imaginable award, among them, many Obies, the Laurence Olivier American Airlines Award for Best New Play, several Tony awards, New York Drama Critics awards, and the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for a Master American Dramatist. In 1993 he was elected to the American Theater Hall of Fame. After our photography session, Guare and I sat down to talk. HS: You’ve said, " I love theatre for recognizing that everything is something else.” What does that mean? JG: That’s what makes poetry possible -- that everything is something else. There is no event, no incident, no object that cannot become something else. Yes, everything is something else, because everything is made for art. HS: You’ve also said, “Theatre is a place of poetry, suggestion and dreams." JG: Well, I couldn’t say it better myself, even if I did say it. That’s the best thing about the theatre, that the theatre is the place of transformation, and the removal of a mask. People go to theatre to see the mask removed. HS: And, you've said, “Theatre has never been an easy place." JG: Never. How could it be? It’s always competition. On one level, just trying to get fannies into the seats. I can write something but how do I get people to come and see it? The fact that a play even opens is a miracle. That you got X amount of people to come together to meet on a certain day -- a director, a designer, actors -- all to show up and tell the same story as the writer is telling, or even for all the people involved tell the same story. Everything conspires against getting a play on. And then having it run is just beside the point. Anything else is pure gravy. The fact it even got on is what is extraordinary. But the competition is mainly to be heard. There are so many valid voices out there. Why should mine be heard? Moss Hart said, brilliantly, "An audience will give any play 15 minutes of their time. They’re there; they’re yours for 15 minutes. And at the 16th minute they’ll decide if they want to go on that journey or not" The audience comes to a play to be costumed, and a failed play means the audience chose not to be costumed in the garb that the playwright and the people on stage have chosen to confer on them. And that’s what that first 15 minutes is about. It is extraordinary that, in those first 15 minutes of a play the entire conflict is laid out and we’re given the imagery to hang onto to make that play come alive. The imagery is what’s going to garb us, what’s going to cloak us. It’s extraordinary what the first 15 minutes of a play are.

HS: Are there guidelines as to what ingredients need to be written into those first 15 minutes? JG: The first 15 minutes needs to convey the central conflict of the play and the emotional coloration in which that conflict will take place. HS: I recall that you said in writing House of Blue Leaves, the first act flowed readily, but it took you five years to complete act two. JG: I didn’t have the craft to handle eight or nine people on stage. It’s a hell of a lot of people to know how to balance and not lose them. It took me a long time to learn. Actors just can’t sit there. They have to be doing something. It’s maintaining everybody’s motivation and everybody’s action, because everybody, every character in the play, has to think that the play is about them or they don’t belong in the scene. It took me a long time to learn the craft of dealing with many actors on stage. HS: The theatre is constantly coming up with innovation, new ideas, new ways of seeing things. Do you derive inspiration or ideas from seeing the plays of others? JG: Of course. I see as many plays as I can. I love to go to the theatre. I have learned a lot. I watch a lot of the new technology. I don’t get seduced by it and say, oh, it’s new, let’s use it. I say, how can I use this? Coupled with less is more. HS: What are you working on currently? JS: We’re doing a new play, called, "Nantucket Sleigh Ride", at Lincoln Center that opens March 18th, so I’m the luckiest guy in the world to have a new play, and an old friend, Jerry Zaks, who’s directing it. I love Jerry, and I’m loving the cast that we’re assembling. So I’m trying….Whenever I go into rehearsal with a play I like to have another play ready to work on the morning after. HS: When you write, do you surprise yourself? JG: I hope so. All the time, actually. You just say, oh, I didn’t expect that to happen. Every play has its own life. There are no rules to apply. I mean, we’ve been working on Blue Leaves to go back to the past, 100 years ago, and I did not…never expected Artie to kill Bananas. It was never in any of the notes, never. And when it happened I was so upset I got up and I threw up. The characters take on their true identity, where they really want to go, and you have to let them go, give them the grace to go.

HS: What is curious to me, as an artist you have to turn your work over to others; the director, the lighting, costume, actors; set. JG: No, I don’t. I’m sharing it with them. I’m letting them into the process. HS: You have control? JG: Yes, I do. If you check the Dramatists Guild contract, nothing can go on that stage without the playwright’s consent. The playwright can choose to give up that consent and allow the designer, or the costume designer, or the casting director to put whatever they want into the play. But everything that will be on that stage has to have approval of the dramatist. And that’s what the Dramatists Guild exists for… only for that purpose. That’s what holding the copyright of our own plays means. Writing for movies is so humiliating, because you give it over and you don’t know what you’re going to see of anything. That’s why I love the theatre. HS: What if a director wants to do this and you don’t want him or her to do this? JG: I would fire them as I’ve done on a couple of occasions. There’s a difference between disagreements and  coming to compromise, and understanding where you might be misguided. I’m not a fascist. There are some playwrights where nothing can be changed. HS: Your plays are done in lots of different places. JG: I’m only interested in the first production, and the first production should be a touchstone in how the play should be done. I just had my three Lydie Breeze plays done together for the first time in Philadelphia. And it was like a set I never imagined, with a cast I never imagined. And it was absolutely thrilling. It went from one until ten o’clock. And it was nothing like I imagined, a revelation, so it was just a gift to me. HS: Does the opposite occur? JG: Absolutely, absolutely. Oh, very much so; very, very, very, very much so. But that’s why I don’t go and see out-of-town productions. The nightmare of a bad production is they’re showing me the truth of my play. And that’s why I avoid it: self-protection. HS: I read about how Six Degrees of Separation came about, a story you heard. And then I understand about this young man who was a sociopath; a brilliant, imaginative, awful human being, how afterwards he then was resentful that you would write a play that was essentially, he thought, about him. And created pain in your life, I heard there was a lawsuit, there was a harassment. JG: He was trying to kill us… it was like death threats. I don’t want to go into it. 

HS: Has the current administration in Washington affected theatre or your work? JG: Sure; it’s screwed up everybody’s heads. Everybody’s…there’s nothing that we don’t see today that we don’t see in the life of injustice, of cruelty, of sheer meanness; relations between men and women. We can no longer look at things with the eyes of the tens, the nineties, the eighties, the seventies, the sixties, or whenever.

[sparda3g]

Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma Chapter 274 Review

Last chapter sure left Erina in daze with the sudden Shoujo plot twist that didn’t prepare her to embrace it. Now, she is out of commission as the two guys are about to duel. Shoujo got nothing on this. This chapter however goes back to Shounen, going to a personal level. It’s the usual case of battle procedure; only now it’s personal and I don’t mean the fight over the Goddess.

In fact, you can say that the last chapter was done for comedic purposes, though I do believe it will lead to something later on. The point is the battle isn’t over obtaining the Goddess like she is placed on the line, but it’s the dignity that counts. It’s like me saying, “Once I win, I will be the best chef in the universe!” Unless aliens can’t cook, my words are just words. For those who believe that she’s on the line, that’s not the point at all. Besides, she’s knocked out as Megumi treats her. It’s a funny way to take her out before she can stop anything, especially since she is the Headmaster. I’m fine with this.

That doesn’t mean this battle will be just bragging rights. Instead, there’s a bet on the line, which essentially make this as Shokugeki-esque. Now I am interested. Soma is the one to make it happen since he challenge Saiba with a bet that if he loses, he will reveal his true identity. He still don’t know that Suzuki is Saiba. That’s funny, because I believe Erina knows, but since she’s knocked out, Soma made a bet on it. In short, it’s a useless condition. Clever move, I have to admit on the writing part.

As evil Saiba is, he plays fairly by requesting a bet on his behalf as well. I find it funny how he asks Megumi for a second opinion, like she happened to be his supporter. If he wasn’t evil, I could imagine a new pairing ensue. While Soma’s bet is wasteful in a sense, Saiba takes it to a deep situation. If Saiba wins, Soma will hand over his precious knife to him. Soma’s reaction is very telling.

I’m glad that this battle not only has gotten interesting, but it has taken to a personal manner; one in which Soma reacted with anger. That knife has been a signature to his persona. That’s like removing the straw hat from Luffy of One Piece. It does make me curious on how much value he has with that knife. Could it be from his father or even his mother? If the latter, that would be devastating as hell. As savage this may sound, but I want him to lose just to see how the story flow. Nevertheless, I am invested with this scenario.

The battle begins and Megumi is treating Erina with an ice pack. Dammit, Megumi. You were the chosen one! You supposed to train her to be prepared for any Shoujo or even Joei level of romance! Joking aside, it is comical to see her treating Erina. Megumi is assigned as the judge. That’s high pressure. She can be the savior or the destroyer; all depends on the victor. I doubt Soma will hate her if Saiba wins, but that would be some drama. I did laugh Soma got his gear ready; hype and hell bent to win. All of this wouldn’t happen if Erina was around, but Shoujo plot was too much for her. I blame Soma for his blunt words.

Another reminder that Megumi and Soma have no idea who Suzuki is as well as why he wants Soma’s knife. Soma believes he’s another Mimasaka, who goes around and takes their precious tools in a Shokugeki. Oddly enough, he’s not that wrong with the end scene, but obviously there’s more. I assumed he is going to take it to prove to Joichiro that he defeated his precious son. It’s the bragging rights at its finest (worst). But it’s fine with Soma, because he’s powered up for a while. Good for you, Soma!...

…Wait…

Megumi feels calm for Soma’s win as Erina is still in coma. It’s going to be a rude awakening if Soma loses. He puts the final touch to his dish and it’s done. It feels like it’s been a long time since we last saw a cooking process in this series. Soma creates Cheese Fondue Pork Loin Katsu Combo Meal. It is similar to the one I had not too long ago, only no cheese fondue. Thinking about it makes me hungry for one. Funny how Megumi considered this Soma-kun-y. That sounds right. Soma’s dish is first to serve…

…uh oh…

A little mug contains cheese, but with an added twist of black sauce. Dipping the katsu on it and you get something tasty. Now I really want to go back and get one with the sauce on the side. It also feels like it’s been a while since we last received a descriptive detail on the dish, which makes it sound even tastier. Soma has learned well with the timing use of heating the pork roast. The way how it sounds doesn’t seem easy to pull off. It creates an illusion that it has been fried yet they forget that it was.

Megumi is so floored by the tastiness, she has become a gal. Well, that’s one way to address the black sauce and the flavor. I never thought to see her in gal form, but there it is. Saeki must be hoping to find a way to do one. Clearly, Soma has upgraded a lot in his technique. With eggplant brulee as a secret ingredient mixed with his foundation of Yukihira Diner and the polish of Tootsuki studies, he made an excellent dish…

What are you doing to me, Soma…

As for Saiba, he’s just hanging out with others; pay no mind of his dish being made. That pretty much means he’s really top tier level if one isn’t worried about the process. All it was missing was a background music of evil. The dish is done and in a strange revelation, Soma wasn’t entirely wrong. He made the same dish as Soma; he is Mimasaka 2.0. Then again, perhaps Saiba is only mocking him by using the same dish and one-up him with a specialty. The only difference is the white sauce.

On one hand, you can see it as a ying-yang metaphor between the two. It’s the most fitting choice really. On the other hand, you can joke around by wondering, “If black sauce made Megumi a gal, what white sauce will do to her?” It’s best for me to avoid racial remarks. That all said this is bad news written all over it.

Not only Soma did start first, but the clear hype push for Saiba is running high. Not to mention, Soma is giving out everything he got to make sure that us audience know that he has signed a death warrant. He is about to be like Samus from Metroid once he loses. Like, “Yeah! I’m god-like at the start,” but once that knife goes, “I’m weak! No!!! N. O. O. O!!!!!”

Overall, I thought the chapter was good for the usual procedure of the battle, but my interest level has increased. The feud has gotten personal, despite Soma has little-to-no gain from revealing his identity. The dishes look delicious and it’s good to see something that I have tried before; just need to dip in a sauce now. The cliffhanger is worrisome, unless Saiba somehow loses, which would be a twist. I’m curious what direction we’re going with this. I guess the series has a lot more in its tank than some expected. If everything goes accordingly, well, the time to say goodbye to the knife is ticking. I’m going to miss you, buddy…

[wineanddinosaur]

In 2021, Who Are Beer Reviews Actually For?

The word “saturation” pops up a lot in conversations about the current American craft beer scene. It’s often in regard to hazy IPAs, but it can also apply to the industry as a whole. In 2020, the United States reached 8,764 for its brewery count. That’s almost double where we were in 2015, and more than four times 2010’s 1,758 total.

BeerAdvocate and RateBeer were founded in 1996 and 2000, respectively. DRAFT Magazine (R.I.P.), which regularly ran beer reviews alongside other industry and culture content, kicked off in 2006. At the time, reviews helped those interested in beer discover new brews and make purchasing decisions. They were all valuable navigation tools as options suddenly grew exponentially from a handful of mass-produced light lagers to riffs on European styles pouring from microbreweries all over the country. Reviews were worth the time investment, both in writing them and reading them, because people were still learning what different styles were and the beers being reviewed stuck around — one could read about a brew and then actually go find it.

Considering the staggering growth in the beer industry since then, though, it’s worth questioning: What’s the point of beer reviews anymore? Is that kind of time investment logical? When we’re speaking about professionally assigned, researched, written, and published reviews (compared to quick “4.7” ratings on Untappd), who are these reviews even for?

A quick scroll through Instagram, or through the “press release” section of industry news site Brewbound, is enough to confirm that, yes, every day is a fresh flurry of new releases from breweries across the country.

“We have a lot more breweries than we had five years ago,” says Brewers Association chief economist Bart Watson. “So there’s more to keep track of, but it doesn’t necessarily mean every individual brewery is putting out a lot more beers. Even if the average number of beers per brewery remains constant, we still have tons more releases.” Watson adds that craft beer’s business model has shifted in the last five years or so, too; it’s now more predicated on getting people to your taproom, a goal many breweries accomplish with relentless novelty and variety.

Writing and editing for outlets like Good Beer Hunting and Craft Beer & Brewing, Kate Bernot was an editor at DRAFT before the magazine shuttered. “Ten years ago, there were just fewer beers, let’s be real,” she says. “These small taproom-only releases were not the phenomenon they are now. People were having, I think, a more homogenous beer experience across the U.S.” Fewer beers and this more homogenous market of options, Bernot says, made it easier for reviews to reach readers and introduce them to craft styles they could actually find.

With so many breweries and limited shelf space to compete for, there’s a constant pressure to keep consumers excited. There’s the path of consistency, sure, promising fans they’ll be happy with the same core beers you’ve been brewing for a decade, but in the age of Untappd, with craft beer enthusiasts on a perpetual hunt for what’s new and now, releases that tick the boxes of limited, rare, and novel seem like a more surefire method. When Elysian Brewing opened in Seattle in 1996, says co-founder Joe Bisacca, there were only about 450 breweries nationwide.

“The rule of thumb was you needed a pale ale, ESB, stout, wheat, and maybe an amber or pilsner,” Bisacca says. Now, he adds, there are nearly 9,000 breweries packaging their beer, vying for retail accounts. “Innovation is a necessary thing to just get a seat at the table. If you don’t, you’re left out in the cold.”

Rob Day, senior director of marketing at Jack’s Abby Craft Lagers in Framingham, Mass., thinks craft beer has hit a peak in terms of pace. “I’m not sure people can release beers much faster or more limited than now,” he says. “We’re down to single-barrel batches and it’s such a small amount of beer to talk about and promote.” In Nashville, Jackalope Brewing Company CEO and co-founder Bailey Spaulding says that while it was prompted by pandemic restrictions shutting down their taproom for six months, her brewery’s team released 27 different limited brews in 2020.

While certainly not every brewery is churning out the same number of releases yearly — some are debuting even more — the very basic math of 8,764 breweries keeping consumers engaged with limited releases equals a constant deluge of beers nearly impossible to keep up with, especially for beer publications covering the entire country. Add to the equation that not only has the number of breweries, and therefore releases, skyrocketed, but the number of beer media outlets has dwindled. Jessica Infante is a reporter at Brewbound who has worked in the industry for almost 11 years. “There was plenty more beer media around than today,” she says of the scene five, 10 years ago. “There were lots of outlets to review products, and a lot fewer breweries making those products.”

Now, it seems the fastest and easiest way for people to discover releases is social media, namely Instagram. Jackie, a Virginia-based beer Instagrammer known as @thatonebeergirl, says she mostly finds new beers via Instagram or email subscriptions with breweries and bottle shops. In Tennessee, Anita Carter, a.k.a. @nashbeerfluencer, says she also finds Instagram most useful. And in Florida, Jamal D., or @thehopcircles, says “Instagram plays a huge role in what beers I’m trying or looking to try outside of Florida. Before Instagram, I would just drink local beer or a new IPA on tap at one of my local bars.”

A beer journalist who now has his own beer and so has experienced beer reviews from both sides, Ale Sharpton points out that Instagram has an unrivaled ability to broadcast so many components of craft beer to so many people at once.

“Social media shows off different styles of beer, different cool artwork on cans, different things going on socially,” Sharpton says. “It brings attention to brewing, and what different brewing choices bring, good and bad. It’s helped with diversity, showing Black, women, Latinx, and underrepresented communities both brewing and drinking, so it’s bringing all these people into beer.” With a quick post of an image on Instagram, a beer can reach thousands instantly, power that a publication’s beer review just can’t boast.

Beer reviews may no longer serve a discovery and navigation purpose in an industry where, by the time you read a review, the beer it’s about may well be long gone. But that doesn’t mean they serve no purpose. In fact, there are two important jobs for beer reviews now: education, and helping breweries stand out to retail accounts.

Beer reviews have always been tricky because of their subjectivity. There are hundreds of beer styles, thousands of beers, and millions of beer drinkers; varying opinions and preferences abound.

“Everybody doesn’t have the same palate,” Sharpton says. “It’s not like buying a car, where you’d read reviews to find something concrete, like what has the best gas mileage. Someone could hate sour beers and give them a low rating, then a sour fan comes along and says, ‘What are you talking about? This is fantastic.’”

Social media and Untappd have democratized beer. People can find beers on their own feeds and develop their own reviews for themselves, feeling less of a need to rely on professional reviewers for suggestions.

“People who use Untappd don’t necessarily want to read reviews by ‘experts,’” says beer writer and author Jeff Alworth. “Indeed, while a number of influencers and consultants call themselves experts, there’s really no famous reviewer or tastemaker in the beer world (à la [wine’s] Robert Parker of 2000). Beer is the people’s drink, and people feel entirely comfortable in their own tongues.”

What even the most subjective beer reviews can offer, however, when written by professional writers and beer judges, is education. Infante says she thinks reviews can help consumers become more informed beer drinkers. Rather than reading reviews to find out what beer to buy, consumers might today be best served by reading reviews for beer they’re already drinking, to see how their experience tracks with that of the reviewer’s, which could help build a stronger understanding of their own palates.

Jamie Bogner is the co-founder and editorial director of Craft Beer & Brewing, which caters to professional brewers, homebrewers, and dedicated beer enthusiasts. Reviews are a big part of the magazine’s content. “For us, there’s a component [of our reviews] that’s about helping folks develop their own language around beer and understand the connection between flavor and language,” he says. “You can try this beer and read this review and as you’re tasting the beer, you’re understanding what it means when someone says catty or woody or bright.”

@thatonebeergirl’s Jackie says she uses reviews for this purpose rather than individual beer discovery. “[It]t is usually because I have already opened my beer and tasted it and I want to see what others thought of the beer and compare their tasting notes to mine,” she says. “Also, if it is a new hop or a new-to-me hop and I can’t pinpoint the flavor, I’ll read reviews to help me decipher what I’m tasting.”

Those who are interested in growing their own beer education are one of the major audience groups for beer reviews in 2021. Writing for both Good Beer Hunting, which focuses on business and culture, and Craft Beer & Brewing, which drills down into brewing, ingredients, flavors, and aromas, Bernot identifies the latter’s readership as “deeply invested in beer recipes, processes, and development.”

“They care about homebrewing and beer judging, so a beer scoring high with professionally trained judges, they care about that,” she says. “They use scores and reviews to calibrate their palates to certain styles, and to know they’re drinking something reliably good.”

The other major audience for beer reviews today? Retail buyers. Along with innovation and consistent quality, another necessary piece of the puzzle when it comes to snagging precious shelf space for breweries is storytelling: What are you and your beer all about? Bogner says we are increasingly seeing breweries build their reputations on strong reviews and medal wins at competitions to stand out from the crowd to buyers at stores, restaurants, and bars. And buyers can use professionally written reviews from trusted critics and judges to delve deeper than Untappd ratings on beer quality when making purchasing decisions.

“Trying to get your beer into a new account, reviews lend some credibility,” Jackalope’s Spaulding says. “That’s still a useful tool for us. A brewery might be trying to say, ‘Hey, we’re doing this new thing,’ where maybe they don’t need to have every single one of their hazy IPAs reviewed, but want to show off something else they can flex their muscles in. That’s where it’s helpful to have a beer reviewed well.”

Positive reviews and competition victories can help build legacies for beers breweries would like to make flagships (which subsequently erases reviews’ relevance). Elysian’s Space Dust IPA is No. 1 in the brewery’s portfolio, Bisacca says, with a huge volume compared to its limited-release beers. Reviews help beers like Space Dust grow into retail accounts and solid sales numbers, but then, as Infante points out, who really needs to read a review for a beer that’s been around for years, like a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale? The reputation is already there.

Still, breweries looking to build brand stories off their core beers with limited releases will want those positive reviews in order to portray consistency to retail accounts as well as consumers. Jack’s Abby pioneered the hoppy lager style with Hoponius Union. That brew’s been a core beer for the brewery for a decade now, so for many craft beer fans, Jack’s Abby devotees, and even retail buyers, reading a review on it would be unnecessary. But reviews can and do help build on Hoponius Union’s brand when Jack’s Abby releases limited offerings that tie back to that flagship, like the Kiwi Rising hoppy lager, Day explains.

The days of craft beer enthusiasts flipping through a magazine to learn about beer styles and find beers brewed in those styles to try via reviews are, for better or worse, gone. Beer reviews have not, however, lost their ability to help breweries develop solid track records nor their value in pushing drinkers’ palates and beer knowledge forward. Those two factors make reviews relevant no matter how many single-barrel releases or limited offerings bombard your Instagram feed on the daily.

The article In 2021, Who Are Beer Reviews Actually For? appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/who-are-beer-reviews-for/

[johnboothus]

In 2021 Who Are Beer Reviews Actually For?

The word “saturation” pops up a lot in conversations about the current American craft beer scene. It’s often in regard to hazy IPAs, but it can also apply to the industry as a whole. In 2020, the United States reached 8,764 for its brewery count. That’s almost double where we were in 2015, and more than four times 2010’s 1,758 total.

BeerAdvocate and RateBeer were founded in 1996 and 2000, respectively. DRAFT Magazine (R.I.P.), which regularly ran beer reviews alongside other industry and culture content, kicked off in 2006. At the time, reviews helped those interested in beer discover new brews and make purchasing decisions. They were all valuable navigation tools as options suddenly grew exponentially from a handful of mass-produced light lagers to riffs on European styles pouring from microbreweries all over the country. Reviews were worth the time investment, both in writing them and reading them, because people were still learning what different styles were and the beers being reviewed stuck around — one could read about a brew and then actually go find it.

Considering the staggering growth in the beer industry since then, though, it’s worth questioning: What’s the point of beer reviews anymore? Is that kind of time investment logical? When we’re speaking about professionally assigned, researched, written, and published reviews (compared to quick “4.7” ratings on Untappd), who are these reviews even for?

A quick scroll through Instagram, or through the “press release” section of industry news site Brewbound, is enough to confirm that, yes, every day is a fresh flurry of new releases from breweries across the country.

“We have a lot more breweries than we had five years ago,” says Brewers Association chief economist Bart Watson. “So there’s more to keep track of, but it doesn’t necessarily mean every individual brewery is putting out a lot more beers. Even if the average number of beers per brewery remains constant, we still have tons more releases.” Watson adds that craft beer’s business model has shifted in the last five years or so, too; it’s now more predicated on getting people to your taproom, a goal many breweries accomplish with relentless novelty and variety.

Writing and editing for outlets like Good Beer Hunting and Craft Beer & Brewing, Kate Bernot was an editor at DRAFT before the magazine shuttered. “Ten years ago, there were just fewer beers, let’s be real,” she says. “These small taproom-only releases were not the phenomenon they are now. People were having, I think, a more homogenous beer experience across the U.S.” Fewer beers and this more homogenous market of options, Bernot says, made it easier for reviews to reach readers and introduce them to craft styles they could actually find.

With so many breweries and limited shelf space to compete for, there’s a constant pressure to keep consumers excited. There’s the path of consistency, sure, promising fans they’ll be happy with the same core beers you’ve been brewing for a decade, but in the age of Untappd, with craft beer enthusiasts on a perpetual hunt for what’s new and now, releases that tick the boxes of limited, rare, and novel seem like a more surefire method. When Elysian Brewing opened in Seattle in 1996, says co-founder Joe Bisacca, there were only about 450 breweries nationwide.

“The rule of thumb was you needed a pale ale, ESB, stout, wheat, and maybe an amber or pilsner,” Bisacca says. Now, he adds, there are nearly 9,000 breweries packaging their beer, vying for retail accounts. “Innovation is a necessary thing to just get a seat at the table. If you don’t, you’re left out in the cold.”

Rob Day, senior director of marketing at Jack’s Abby Craft Lagers in Framingham, Mass., thinks craft beer has hit a peak in terms of pace. “I’m not sure people can release beers much faster or more limited than now,” he says. “We’re down to single-barrel batches and it’s such a small amount of beer to talk about and promote.” In Nashville, Jackalope Brewing Company CEO and co-founder Bailey Spaulding says that while it was prompted by pandemic restrictions shutting down their taproom for six months, her brewery’s team released 27 different limited brews in 2020.

While certainly not every brewery is churning out the same number of releases yearly — some are debuting even more — the very basic math of 8,764 breweries keeping consumers engaged with limited releases equals a constant deluge of beers nearly impossible to keep up with, especially for beer publications covering the entire country. Add to the equation that not only has the number of breweries, and therefore releases, skyrocketed, but the number of beer media outlets has dwindled. Jessica Infante is a reporter at Brewbound who has worked in the industry for almost 11 years. “There was plenty more beer media around than today,” she says of the scene five, 10 years ago. “There were lots of outlets to review products, and a lot fewer breweries making those products.”

Now, it seems the fastest and easiest way for people to discover releases is social media, namely Instagram. Jackie, a Virginia-based beer Instagrammer known as @thatonebeergirl, says she mostly finds new beers via Instagram or email subscriptions with breweries and bottle shops. In Tennessee, Anita Carter, a.k.a. @nashbeerfluencer, says she also finds Instagram most useful. And in Florida, Jamal D., or @thehopcircles, says “Instagram plays a huge role in what beers I’m trying or looking to try outside of Florida. Before Instagram, I would just drink local beer or a new IPA on tap at one of my local bars.”

A beer journalist who now has his own beer and so has experienced beer reviews from both sides, Ale Sharpton points out that Instagram has an unrivaled ability to broadcast so many components of craft beer to so many people at once.

“Social media shows off different styles of beer, different cool artwork on cans, different things going on socially,” Sharpton says. “It brings attention to brewing, and what different brewing choices bring, good and bad. It’s helped with diversity, showing Black, women, Latinx, and underrepresented communities both brewing and drinking, so it’s bringing all these people into beer.” With a quick post of an image on Instagram, a beer can reach thousands instantly, power that a publication’s beer review just can’t boast.

Beer reviews may no longer serve a discovery and navigation purpose in an industry where, by the time you read a review, the beer it’s about may well be long gone. But that doesn’t mean they serve no purpose. In fact, there are two important jobs for beer reviews now: education, and helping breweries stand out to retail accounts.

Beer reviews have always been tricky because of their subjectivity. There are hundreds of beer styles, thousands of beers, and millions of beer drinkers; varying opinions and preferences abound.

“Everybody doesn’t have the same palate,” Sharpton says. “It’s not like buying a car, where you’d read reviews to find something concrete, like what has the best gas mileage. Someone could hate sour beers and give them a low rating, then a sour fan comes along and says, ‘What are you talking about? This is fantastic.’”

Social media and Untappd have democratized beer. People can find beers on their own feeds and develop their own reviews for themselves, feeling less of a need to rely on professional reviewers for suggestions.

“People who use Untappd don’t necessarily want to read reviews by ‘experts,’” says beer writer and author Jeff Alworth. “Indeed, while a number of influencers and consultants call themselves experts, there’s really no famous reviewer or tastemaker in the beer world (à la [wine’s] Robert Parker of 2000). Beer is the people’s drink, and people feel entirely comfortable in their own tongues.”

What even the most subjective beer reviews can offer, however, when written by professional writers and beer judges, is education. Infante says she thinks reviews can help consumers become more informed beer drinkers. Rather than reading reviews to find out what beer to buy, consumers might today be best served by reading reviews for beer they’re already drinking, to see how their experience tracks with that of the reviewer’s, which could help build a stronger understanding of their own palates.

Jamie Bogner is the co-founder and editorial director of Craft Beer & Brewing, which caters to professional brewers, homebrewers, and dedicated beer enthusiasts. Reviews are a big part of the magazine’s content. “For us, there’s a component [of our reviews] that’s about helping folks develop their own language around beer and understand the connection between flavor and language,” he says. “You can try this beer and read this review and as you’re tasting the beer, you’re understanding what it means when someone says catty or woody or bright.”

@thatonebeergirl’s Jackie says she uses reviews for this purpose rather than individual beer discovery. “[It]t is usually because I have already opened my beer and tasted it and I want to see what others thought of the beer and compare their tasting notes to mine,” she says. “Also, if it is a new hop or a new-to-me hop and I can’t pinpoint the flavor, I’ll read reviews to help me decipher what I’m tasting.”

Those who are interested in growing their own beer education are one of the major audience groups for beer reviews in 2021. Writing for both Good Beer Hunting, which focuses on business and culture, and Craft Beer & Brewing, which drills down into brewing, ingredients, flavors, and aromas, Bernot identifies the latter’s readership as “deeply invested in beer recipes, processes, and development.”

“They care about homebrewing and beer judging, so a beer scoring high with professionally trained judges, they care about that,” she says. “They use scores and reviews to calibrate their palates to certain styles, and to know they’re drinking something reliably good.”

The other major audience for beer reviews today? Retail buyers. Along with innovation and consistent quality, another necessary piece of the puzzle when it comes to snagging precious shelf space for breweries is storytelling: What are you and your beer all about? Bogner says we are increasingly seeing breweries build their reputations on strong reviews and medal wins at competitions to stand out from the crowd to buyers at stores, restaurants, and bars. And buyers can use professionally written reviews from trusted critics and judges to delve deeper than Untappd ratings on beer quality when making purchasing decisions.

“Trying to get your beer into a new account, reviews lend some credibility,” Jackalope’s Spaulding says. “That’s still a useful tool for us. A brewery might be trying to say, ‘Hey, we’re doing this new thing,’ where maybe they don’t need to have every single one of their hazy IPAs reviewed, but want to show off something else they can flex their muscles in. That’s where it’s helpful to have a beer reviewed well.”

Positive reviews and competition victories can help build legacies for beers breweries would like to make flagships (which subsequently erases reviews’ relevance). Elysian’s Space Dust IPA is No. 1 in the brewery’s portfolio, Bisacca says, with a huge volume compared to its limited-release beers. Reviews help beers like Space Dust grow into retail accounts and solid sales numbers, but then, as Infante points out, who really needs to read a review for a beer that’s been around for years, like a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale? The reputation is already there.

Still, breweries looking to build brand stories off their core beers with limited releases will want those positive reviews in order to portray consistency to retail accounts as well as consumers. Jack’s Abby pioneered the hoppy lager style with Hoponius Union. That brew’s been a core beer for the brewery for a decade now, so for many craft beer fans, Jack’s Abby devotees, and even retail buyers, reading a review on it would be unnecessary. But reviews can and do help build on Hoponius Union’s brand when Jack’s Abby releases limited offerings that tie back to that flagship, like the Kiwi Rising hoppy lager, Day explains.

The days of craft beer enthusiasts flipping through a magazine to learn about beer styles and find beers brewed in those styles to try via reviews are, for better or worse, gone. Beer reviews have not, however, lost their ability to help breweries develop solid track records nor their value in pushing drinkers’ palates and beer knowledge forward. Those two factors make reviews relevant no matter how many single-barrel releases or limited offerings bombard your Instagram feed on the daily.

The article In 2021, Who Are Beer Reviews Actually For? appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/who-are-beer-reviews-for/

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