#yesterday i wrote 5 essays

[donghuamuqing]

Beating the fuck out this geography report rn

[alpaca-clouds]

Decolonizing Narratives - The Final Challenge?

Yesterday I wrote about the issue, that a lot of people still have in terms of accepting Solarpunk stories that either do work without any conflict at all - or at least conflicts that do not result out of the world in truth being some sort of "trap". Part of this is very much connected to the fact that Western Narrative Storytelling assumes that every story needs a concept, while people do not realize that this is not a general, but a western thing. Which... kinda gets me to the other big issue we have: How all-encompassing colonialism is in our storytelling over here.

I spent most of 2020, while everything was in shut-down, writing a collection of more than 20 essays on the topic of "Decolonizing Fantasy". Essays in which I went into this topic: How prevalent colonial narrative and colonial patterns of storytelling are within the genres of fantasy and science fiction. (Tell me, if you are interested in me translating them into English.)

But it is not just Fantasy and Science Fiction. It is kinda everywhere. In Romance, and just "Drama", especially in terms of Literary Fiction, how people will call it. And of course it is there in Crime and Mystery.

And yeah, sometimes the colonial narratives are a lot more obvious. Like, yeah, no shit that "international thriller", in which the main characters are CIA operatives, is supportive of a colonial narrative. No shit, the horror story, that culturally appropriates wendigos is fucking colonial shit. But...

It sneaks in through so many things. So many ideas on how a story needs to be structured are western, and assuming they need to be there is a colonial thought. As it assumes that western narrative storytelling is in some way better than other forms of narrative storytelling.

I still remember that back in school I had a long argument with a teacher, who was teaching us about 3-Act and 5-Act structures, to which I - who knew about East Asian literature, due to reading the blog of a Japanese writer - went like: "Yeah, but there are other ways of structuring stories, right?" To whcih my teacher looked at me in horror and was like: "No!" And this autistic kid instantly was like: "Yeah there are." Que argument.

And there are quite a few of those things that are speaking for this phenomenon. The simple idea that "western storytelling is the only valid way of storytelling" and that "western norms are the only norms". It creeps up in so many stories in often quite subtle ways. And I am getting frustrated with either writers - or folks reviewing movies, books and other media - never questioning this stuff.

Do stories with another structure feel kinda strange, when you have been raised on the 3-Act-structure? Yeah, it does. But that it make a story bad? I would argue no. We just need to adjust our expectations in this regard.

I could repeat what I said yesterday: Try consuming media from other cultures. But I know it is not always that easy. But... If you get the chance, you should still try. Open your mind for other types of stories, rather than this one kind of story dominating western media.

[study-with-aura]

Tuesday, September 10, 2024

I didn't have time to work on my reflective essay today, but that's okay. I can work on it Sunday if I need to. A lot is going on Sunday, but I will have a bit of time here and there to take a look at it.

Maybe I have too much in a day that I need to get done along with my extracurriculars. Then again, if my day wasn't packed, I would be lost. That happened some this summer, which is why outside of camp weeks, I kept adding things to do and creating schedules. Yes, I am a schedule and list person. I do allow room for flexibility, but I really love my lists and color coded schedules!

The next three days are my busiest, so if I do not post, that is why. I will do my best as I enjoy writing about the day!

Tasks Completed:

Algebra 2 - Completed worksheet on applications of systems of linear equations

American Literature - Copied vocabulary terms + read about Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" + read an excerpt from "Civil Disobedience" + typed up a response to literature (30/30)

Spanish 3 - Practiced reading my dialogue from yesterday + read the dialogue out loud to my dad (25/25)

Bible 2 - Read 1 Kings 7

Early American History - Read about Maryland, Carolina, and Georgia + read more about the original 13 colonies + read excerpt from The Maryland Toleration Act of 1649 + answered question + explored a world major historical event timeline for this period of history

Earth Science with Lab - Answered questions from yesterday's reading

Music Appreciation - Watched the listening guide on Lutosławski's Concerto for Orchestra + listened to the concerto + wrote out a music description using music vocabulary

Khan Academy - Completed US History Unit 2: Lesson 2.7-2.8

Duolingo - Studied for approximately 30 minutes (Spanish + French + Chinese) + completed daily quests

Piano - 60-minute piano lesson + practiced for two hours

Reading - Read pages 154-180 of The Do-Over by Lynn Painter

Chores -  Laundry + took trash and recycling out

Activities of the Day:

September Study (John 14:13-14, 2 Corinthians 5:20, Matthew 28: 18-19, Galatians 5:22-23, 2 Peter 1:4-7, 1 Corinthians 2:16, Jude 1:24)

Personal Bible Study (Luke 1)

Ballet

Pointe

Journal/Mindfulness

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Daniel Villarreal at LGBTQ Nation:

Transphobic billionaire Elon Musk told transphobic possible-billionaire J.K. Rowling to try writing something “interesting and positive” this weekend after she shared a 709-word essay explaining her transphobic views on Musk’s social media platform, X. Musk has also repeatedly used X to promote transphobic views to his 182.3 million followers. Musk recently saw Rowling’s April 6 post in which she shared her trans-exclusive definition of a woman and said, yet again, that trans women are a violent threat to cis women and that gender-affirming care harms children — neither of which is true. Musk replied in a now-deleted post, “While I heartily agree with your points regarding sex/gender, may I suggest also posting interesting and positive content on other matters?”

In a May 5 post referencing Musk’s reaction, Rowling wrote, “Hahaha, just realised that I missed being advised to share more positive content yesterday.” She then linked to an article about her writing career. Musk commented on her post, writing, “I need to be reminded of this myself from time to time.” Around the same time, Musk highlighted a post asking if robots in the future will be able to fart, shared a video from transphobic Daily Wire broadcaster Matt Walsh, and pushed the baseless claim that election fraud in the U.S. is rampant — it’s not. Later that same day, Musk commented on a post about Rowling, writing, “Rowling rocks.”

Anti-trans extremist Elon Musk tells fellow anti-trans bigot J.K. Rowling to tone down her vigilantly anti-trans vitriol.

See Also:

PinkNews: Elon Musk just asked JK Rowling to lighten up about trans folks – yes, really

The Advocate: Transphobe Elon Musk calls out J.K. Rowling for posting transphobic content

[whoiwanttoday]

So I pre purchased tickets for Love Lies Bleeding for a few reasons. One, it's getting great reviews and has been since it first screened at SXSW. I already liked the idea of it but knowing it works is hugely exciting. If you don't know, Film Noir is one of my favorite genres and every November my friends and I do Noirvember which started a decade ago with them going, "Film Noir seems cool but I don't know anything about it". Well guys, I did know about it and it was about time to put that education to use so that first year I chose 5 movies that I felt would help demonstrate the characteristics of the genre and wrote essays about each one with what to look for and what identifying tropes of the genre were there. Since then I have put in far less effort but every year we try to grab some movies that are significant for various reasons to the genre. My point is, I love Noir and really appreciate French film critics for inventing it after the fact. So Love Lies Bleeding is not a Noir, it is a Neo-Noir but for obvious reasons it's a genre that always interests me for obvious reasons. It's a Neo-Noir because you can't make film Noir anymore, part of what makes it film noir is when it was made and that no one has ever set out to make a Noir, if you are you're making a Neo-Noir. But I love them, too, especially sun soaked ones. Thirdly, Kristen Stewart. First of all, I think she is a tremendous actress who just does great work and her projects just get more and more interesting. They don't always work but man, I want big swings rather than boring. There are so many safe movies I give higher ratings to than interesting failures but those safe, bland mediocre movies all fade into the background, I still think about the interesting failures. So I love that she tries cool projects and the truth is most of her work. She always works in them. But the thing is, when I heard she was doing this I just knew it was perfect. My favorite Noir figure is probably Humphrey Bogart. That's not an out there selection, the guy was undeniably cool. And I was like, yes, let Kristen Stewart be Humphrey Bogart. I think she could 100% pull off that. I mean, I don't think she is in this movie, she's playing a different kind of a mess than the cool character who keeps getting in over his head but when it comes to vibes of someone who can be my favorite sort of Noir protagonist it's her. Which is a long way of saying I have tickets to go see the movie and resisted posting Kristen yesterday cause my brain was like, "We'll post her after we see the movie". Welp, I didn't make it cause she has been all over the place and looking very good. So I caved and made it exactly one day. Today I want to fuck Kristen Stewart.

[atthebell]

it's really interesting that you say that vodwatching is harder for you to summarize/liveblog cause i find it so much easier :o at least when i've been working through phil's blogs for the wiki. i think it's cause i already know where the story is headed that I have a clearer idea of what I'm looking out for (well and also, qphil isn't steeped in quite as much federation/enigma/etc, so i do think you've got much more complex things going on than me)

that being said ur killing it on the cellbit wiki stuff :] really glad you're in on this project too!

i wrote like a few paragraphs of cellbit's wiki page yesterday and it took me. five hours? that's with irl stuff getting in the way and i am VERY particular about how i cite and how to summarize so things aren't super crowded (since that can go in the day-by-day history instead) but like i have to reference SO many vods to talk about stuff and because of how long he streams, all the stuff he's involved in, every investigation he does, and especially just how busy his early days were (and the sprint really didn't stop until the eggs disappeared) it means there is SO much content to cover so i end up hopping across so many different vods to grab details, and i'm also trying to vodwatch as like. a fun activity for myself, so i don't want to burn myself out.

i also take very quick notes and can note down timestamps far easier live than when i'm rewatching a vod and trying to find a specific moment, because then i'm having to scrub through and try to figure out what moments are important and what are just him fucking around in a google doc. like i cannot stress enough cellbit used to stream qsmp for at least 4 hours 5 days a week that's SO much streams to trawl through (best wishes to bbh wiki folks, although at least he's not doing a ton of detailed investigation). and it's a lot of catching up, because i didn't use to keep detailed notes and so now i have to find things that i only half-remember (picture me sprawled over my desk with my head in my hands, that's me considering whether it's worth it to search twitter for an update tweet to cross reference for a timestamp)

cellbit has so much content honestly a huge part of the work is the condensing it element, wherein deciding what is important enough to go on the regular history vs. what is too detailed takes quite a while. i have two separate google docs for his lore, one that's personal and one that's specifically for the wiki, and i spend ages just going through and making sure things aren't me going on and on about something that isn't necessary for a brief summary. and i want things to be easy to understand and possibly catch up on for folks who missed a lot of his earlier stuff, which means explaining it well but not with like. essays and essays about his character progression, and keeping it as factual as possible-- once again, meaning a lot of vod citations.

also i think a lot of folks don't realize how much cellbit's investigations tie in with larger server lore-- he's debunked a bunch of theories about the federation and found out SO much info about them and the eggs and things like that, and a lot of that info gets lost over time. so documenting everything he's found means documenting quite a bit of overall server lore with sources. i'm like very lucky that i have a pretty good memory, especially for mysteries, so i know that i do need to find that stuff, even if i don't remember exactly when it was.

anyway back to your original point yeah i just find it leagues easier when i'm not having to go back and find a specific moment in a 9 hour vod and instead i can just have a google doc open jotting down everything important, and then later on all that info is just there for me to pull from. it makes the writing element easier along with everything else

[cobaltrequiem]

I meant to send this yesterday but as someone who has loved bioshock for years I’m genuinely very curious to hear your thoughts on the games if you’re up for sharing some of them

OMG HI sorry I didn't see this in my ask box! Thanks for the ask @sand-worms and appologies for the rambling ahead!

The first BioShock game is my favourite out of the whole series, but that's partially because I'm quite sentimental about it. It was one of the first "serious" games that I had ever played. I was a teenager and before that point I was only allowed to play "family friendly" games. BioShock was one of the first games I bought with my own money on my own console (a switch lite I saved up for myself), and it was wonderful. The way it wasn't afraid to be overtly political and it wasn't afraid to frighten or challenge the player. It didn't treat you like an idiot.

I soaked up every aspect of it. The gameplay. The setting. The area designs. The characters. The messages that it wore on its sleeve. And the story, god the story! I was completely transfixed by it.

I finished it in two days, and I still consider it to be one of my top 5 games of all time. I wrote an essay on it's themes for my higher english course, and still regularly think about it.

It is one of the two games ever that has caused me to have an epiphany about videogames, not as simply an enojyable experience but as art, and truthfully I cannot bring myself to replay it. My first experience with it was so thorough and meaningful that I cannot bring myself to replay it. I know it wouldn't be the same. You were beautiful and I can never play you again.

I played BioShock 2 shortly after, and was initially quite disapointed at it for not being BioShock 1. You could tell that the story was written after 1 and that bugged me. Its political messaging also didn't seem as pointed to me.

However, throughout the course of the game I grew to really appreciate it's differences. The personal connection between Elanor and Subject Delta was incredibly touching. The choices in the game felt more meaningful and gave it an aspect of replayability that the first BioShock game did not have. The gameplay aditions were also great! I loved using the drill in particular, it was an incredibly satisfying weapon to use. It's story about altruism also resonated with me despite the slow start and I thought the adition of multiple endings (that didn't hinge on "is murdering children bad?") was also great.

BioShock 2 only took me a single day to complete, I sat down for 10 hours and played it all the way through with very few breaks, and I do seriously intend to revisit it - I own a copy for the xbox 360 now which should be infinitely better than playing on a switch lite. Overall its a very well made game, it just doesn't hold the same place in my heart as the original.

BioShock Infinite haunts me.

It's a game that had so much potential. The religious horror. The game's aesthetics. Playing a character that talked and reacted to things!

I went in with high hopes and loved it initially. I had a very personal experience with it too, albeit in a very different way. When I was a young child my dad bought a copy of BioShock Infinite shortly after it released and I would sit in the living room while he played it. It terrified me.

I have particularly vivid memories of the scene at the fair, it was maybe one of the first genuinely terrifying things I'd seen in a piece of media. It was a foundational memory for me and is perhaps where some of my love of horror comes from as an adult because it didn't just scare me to the point of tears, it fascinated me. The gore laden glory kills and the mechanised patriots were similarly horrifying but I never stopped watching. There was something alluring about this game I shouldn't have been seeing.

I really wanted to like BioShock Infinite but just couldn't. The story at times seemed like an excuse to get you from one point to another, the fence sitting centrist politics were tiring, and it tried to do everything at once.

BioShock Infinite was not a good game, but it was mediocre in an interesting way and that has stuck with me.

It wanted to be a political drama. It wanted to be high concept sci-fi. It wanted to be religious horror.

The area design made you feel like you were going around in circles. Vigours had very little story or gameplay relevance making them seem like a pointless adition clearly only meant to imitate plasmids. It didn't feel like a BioShock game but despite all of that it had potential. So many different ideas went into it, so many interesting storybeats and scenes and themes went into it but it just ended up feeling muddy and convoluted.

I can pick out so many things I like about it, so many things that are interesting and could have been amazing but weren't

Not too long ago I read a post from someone on this site. Something along the lines of "a good game will stay with you for a week, but a game that's mediocre in an interesting way will stick with you for life"

My dad never finished BioShock Infinite, but I did. I still think about it to this day.

[ellaenchanting]

50 Days of Fetishes List

50 days of writing about what turns me on:

1. Pocketwatches

2. Trance Face

3. Being "Period Angry"

4. Teacher's Pet (Being "Good")

5. Needy and Greedy (Feeling "Forbidden" Emotions)

6. Dapper Gals

7. Slow Dismantling

8. House Special (Doing the Play the Other Person Feels Best/Most Experienced At- Or Enjoys the Most)

9. Conspiring/Plotting

10. Denial/Orgasm Control

11. Being "Hot" (Looking Pretty/Attractive to Someone)

12. That First, Delicious Moment of Sinking into Trance

13. Casual Fucking With

14. Resistance Play

15. Evocative Hypnotist Smiles

16. Connection in Trance

17. Kneeling

18. Pleasure Conditioning

19. Homework

20. Involuntariness (Feeling Like Things Are Happening without Conscious Volition)

21. Evil Therapist Tropes

22. Skill

23. Attention (Having Someone's Attention)

24. Innocence (And Being Corrupted)

25. Relaxation as a Pathway to Arousal

26. Almost-Telepathic Rapport

27. Incredibly Deep Trance

28. Oral Fixation

29. Amnesia/Memory Play

30. Strong/Buff Women (and Rasslin')

31. Being Clever

32. Being Taught or Coached

33. Dominance

34. Witchcraft (Witchy Tropes)

35. Camp

36. Fucked Up Ageplay

37. Covert Hypnosis and General Hypnotic Sneakiness

38. Intentional Vulnerability

39. Keeping it Simple

40. Accents

41. A Touch of Patronization

42. Bad Hypnosis

43. Team Ups

44. Dissociation

45. Voice Changes (and Hypnotic Voices)

46. No-Win Conditions

47. Begging

48. Comfort Kink

49. Partner Enthusiasm

50. Words

It's strange- I thought when I finished this I'd have a very clear picture of my sexuality and what turns me on. Looking at the list overall, it feels pretty piecemeal. It's hard to sum up something as vast and quirky as "what I think is hot" with a list.

Still, I'm glad I wrote it. My goal was to write a spontaneous entry every day and doing that gave me some insight into both how I was feeling during different days and how different fetishes feel exciting at different times. It also helped me think deeply about what turns me on about some of my fetishes and why they're interesting to me. I may add entries past 50 if more thoughts come up. (The 50 was always an artificial limit I posed on myself anyway.)

As I was writing, I felt like I was covering a lot of switchy interests and being very conscious of the ways I enjoy play from the bottom and from the top. The entries felt pretty balanced between top and bottom as I was writing them. I even tried to make them more balanced- when I wrote a bottom-leaning entry, I'd try and write a top-leaning entry the next day. However, when I look back, there are about 24 items I enjoy primarily as a bottom, about 14 I enjoy primarily as a top, and 7 that feel 50/50 pure switchy. (The rest don't really neatly fall into top/bottom/switch categories.) That's more lopsided than I anticipated. I don't know if that signals I'm more of a bottom-leaning switch or if it's the result of having recent new, exciting bottomy play with a new partner and fantasizing more about that. I wonder if my list 6 months from would be different.

I'd be curious if any of you out here have thoughts on this list. Is there anything that's surprising? Anything you want to ask about? Especially if you know me well- is there anything obvious I'm leaving out?

If this kind of exercise sounds fun to you, I encourage you to try it! @misscammiedawn finished her list yesterday- it's here if you want to see her entries. Both @ultinath and @h-sleepingirl are doing projects - Nath was writing hypnokinky essays and Sleepingirl has just started writing their own days of fetish entries. I highly recommend you check all of these Tumblrs out for insights and some great, thoughtful writing.

[candy8448]

French writing

Gcse rambles

I cooked SO HARD in the 150 words essay

I did the first one about holidays (you know its bad when you cant understand the bullet points of the second one) and that second bulletpoint was just, i wrote something like:

When i was little, i visited Spain with my family all the time to visit my grandparents. It was the best. But today i don't travel often so when i found out that i was going to France for work a year ago, i was very excited and happy! I vidited the Eiffel Tower which was really big. My time in France was fun, educative and great but one day next year, i would like to go to Germany because i hear that the bread is good and the history is interesting for me.

Bro i COOKED im so proud of it cuz i usually do badly on the writing exam. I wrote 118 words for tge 90 word essay and 189 words for the 150 word essay lol. And i even had half an hour to spare where in every other exam i strangely didnt have time even tho in the mocks i always did. French was laughably easy this year tho so im terrified the grade boundries will be HIIIIIIIGH

Also for the 90 word i was gonna answer the holiday ine but then went and looked at the other two questions then when i flicked back i accidently landed on the school one and started writing without realising but i did okay on that one i think

In the speakig exam i had prepared such a funny little thing about food, and there were 3 questions the teacher could have asked about food and she didnt and i was so dissapointed. It was "yesterday i ate escargo with pain au chocolates, it was bizare and rubbish and i hated it >:("

Anyway here are some memes:

FRENCH IS DONE!!! FOREVER!! (i wanna contiinue on duolingo otherwise what was the point in the last 5 years)

ITS THE HALF TERM GUYS! WE'RE HALFWAY THERE! WE CAN DO THIS!

[rinkwrites]

Day 5/36 - in preparation for my YL project

sorry that I'm posting so late I was very ill yesterday

ATE

Breakfast - bagel with honey yoghurt on it (sounds so weird, tastes so good) and an apple. Also had a ginger shot because I was feeling a bit under the weather

Lunch - Leftover basmati rice from last night with kale, avocado and tomato. Genuinely so delicious. Then greengages and a fig. Also some tonic water because I deserve a treat at the end of a long week

Dinner - Prawn Pizza and Ben & Jerry's phish food ice cream

EXTRA-CURRICULARS

MHA shift - nice as I mainly just chatted and drew on the board. though a little stressful as my friend who was supposed to cover the last bit of my shift so I could run to rehearsal didn't show up till late and I had to sprint to make it on time

Singing Competition Rehearsal - Fine though a little dull. None of my friends are in the same choir as me so I have to go on my own and sit on my own which sucks.

WORK

History - More reading and answering questions. I really like this new topic on medieval Scotland, it's really easy to wrap your head around.

Latin - Some poetry analysis, and then I put off revising for my test next week - I'll (hopefully) get round to it at some point over the long weekend.

Double Biology - So confusing and horrible, but we got homemade cookies to I pulled through

RMPS - wrote and essay in about half the time it was supposed to take, then did some admin for the rest of the lesson

HW - none

EXERCISE

Sprint through the corridor to get to my rehearsal?

TO DO

work out when university open days are, and which ones you want to go to

pack bags for canoeing expedition

work out what needs done this weekend

REMEMBER TO TAKE YOUR OWN PICTURES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

None of these pictures are mine, they are from Pinterest, credits go to original owners, I will try and use my own pictures when I remember to take them.

[transheterochromia]

Hiii can you answer 1,5,8, and 18 from the song ask? I hope you have an awesome day by the way

Hi hi hello! Sorry I took so long I accidentally logged out and didn't notice 😭😂 /lh

I hope you had an awesome day yesterday and an awesome one today too!!

1: Your favorite song!

~ God this is hard /lh. Probablyyyy The Village by Wrabel tbqh. I wrote an analysis essay on that song + music video in college because it means so much to me and I just had to share its importance with people that may not have heard it otherwise, y'know? Such a lovely song (heartbreaking but phenomenal) ALSO Wrabel liked a comment I left on one of his tiktok videos using that song :3 (related enough to share lol I FREAKED OUT /pos)

5: A song you can relate to!

~ Let You Down by NF. Songs about mental health really stick out to me (maybe because I was someone raised on 'lift my truck grab my beer' country music and like the difference lmao /lh) and NF in general is phenomenal, but this song feels like he pulled his words straight from my experiences, and it makes me feel so fuckin seen

8: The best song from your favorite album!

~ Addict With a Pen from Twenty One Pilots' self-titled album. Has pretty religious undertones but in the "why can't I see you, why won't you help me" manner. One of the only songs that can quell a bad panic attack for me!

18: A song that gets stuck in your head!

~ PINK PONY CLUB BY CHAPPEL ROAN I don't think I have to explain this one in the queer corner of Tumblr lmao /lh /silly (but also that song the Scottish(?) kids dropped "think you can stop what we do? I doubt it [...]" Spark? Constantly being played by at least 1 mf in headspace lmao)

[wellntruly]

Happy Day After Oscars Day. Honestly, pretty darn sweet & moving time, a lot of that!

Which was really nice for me, because honestly again, this was an odd year for me in movies. While I was going wild on things from 20-70 years ago, just so many of the 2022 releases I reacted to like, sure! A gentleman's 3 out of 5. I eventually petered out at 38 new releases, my lowest number in a few years.

But when I closed off the list yesterday right before the ceremony, fussing again one final time over the order, I found that I did actually care quite a bit about a few of these. There were some that really did reach me, ones that stuck. And so I want to share them with you.

My top ten list for 2022, new ones this time

(Title link is to my original Letterboxd log; apologies that some are basically mini essays and others are like, a line. Keeping it unpredictable!)

1 The Fabelmans, dir. Steven Spielberg

My curse to bear this season has been that all the marketing for The Fabelmans makes it look like the most saccharine celebration of ~the magic of movies~, when in fact it's like, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Disassociator. It's a depiction of movie-making that's ambiguous and complex and in many instances quite dark, if not even quite fucked up, and also it looks like a Steven Spielberg movie: glowy and perfect. And that itself becomes part of what is fucked up and complex and ambiguous in this context! Best scenes are all the ones where, to paraphrase Emily St. James again, you can feel Spielberg's screenwriter, bestie & off-book therapist Tony Kushner, going, huh, do you think we should maybe unpack this a little, Steve?, and Steve going oh, no thanks!, that's what making it a movie is for! This is one of the most legible filmmakers of all time, an incredible skill that often gets discounted as "populism" because he presents scenes and ideas and emotions just so understandably, here presenting scenes and ideas and emotions that sometimes he still doesn't understand, for which he has no answers, just knows that everything that was going on here was important. And that shimmering push & pull between his clarity as a filmmaker and the thorny, confused memory project he's engaged in, seems to either not land (many viewers, of those who even saw it), or land so fucking hard (the few, the brave, the Sammy Fabelman fans).

2 Aftersun, dir. Charlotte Wells

It has a tragic fragmentary dream ballet they keep returning to with incrementally building context like the Christmas party flashback in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, obviously I am heart-sore in love with this one.

3 Hit the Road (جاده خاکی), dir. Panah Panahi

Do you know about the Iranian family road trip movie? It's a jewel. Alive and inventive and funny and beautiful, and tragic, as while the rest of the family is hiding the purpose of their trip to the Turkish border from their irrepressible youngest, we understand all too well why they're taking his older brother there. Of the top five needle drops in film this year, three of them are in this movie. I love everything about the way this film constructs itself. Hit the Road!

4 Everything Everywhere All At Once, dir. Daniels

I ping-ponged between this and Nope for my fourth slot for ages, but finally I just kept thinking about how Dan Kwan accidentally wrote a line from the Nine Days song 'Absolutely (Story of a Girl)', and then decided to just do it a few more times and make it a ~motif~. There is simply such renegade joyousness in the creation of this movie, and it pours through in every earnest unhinged minute. I'm so proud of them!!!!!!

5 Nope, dir. Jordan Peele

I LOVED this. This year's best marriage of ideas and filmmaking, and also somehow about filmmaking without ever feeling too recursive, instead feels frankly--hi to number one--most of all like a '70s Spielberg horror movie. And not for nothing, also several of the best performances of the year. I actually wrote quite a lot on Letterboxd about this one, more there! (spoilers!)

6 Benediction, dir. Terence Davies

The film equivalent of the time someone sent me this message and I replied like this

I mean of course it was for me.

7 Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, dir. Dean Fleischer Camp

A remarkable and wonderful amount of depth packed into this movie about the tiny shell.

8 Decision To Leave (헤어질 결심), dir. Park Chan-wook

The Really Kept Growing On Me champion of the year? I just kept thinking about images and vibes from this movie! THE romantic drama of 2022, understanding that something that is so romance is a pair of sad weirdos surveilling each other.

9 TÁR, dir. Todd Field

And the Meme champion of the year, which is like, you know how at the start of a project it's good to define 'what would success look like for us?'

10 Catherine Called Birdy, dir. Lena Dunham

Do you know how hard it is to make a movie this watchable and winning?? Buoyant with talent and colorful textiles, I laughed, I cried, what a treat! Give it a watch! Give us something like this every year!

*****

And some assorted specific performances and crafts not part of the awards conversation that I'd like to single out too:

Cinematography: Gregory Oke, Aftersun, and Hoyte van Hoytema, Nope

The perspective in Aftersun, I've been talking about it everywhere. You are so rooted to this young girl, who sees a lot, and yet you are also piecing together things that are going on that you can tell she isn't quite seeing. Just gorgeous filmmaking.

And are you KIDDING me with what they pulled off in Nope! Depicting not looking at something immense, but still capturing the immensity of it--the finesse! Also that day-for-night, kiss.

Supporting Actors: Steven Yeun, Nope, and Andrew Scott, Catherine Called Birdy

The best supporting male performance of the year actually won and that's so fucking incredible, LOVE you Ke Huy Quan. But I also want to mention these two guys, who similarly do beauuutiful supporting work in each of their films, rich and dynamic and perfectly elevating the work as a whole at exactly the right moments, with exactly the right notes.

Lead Actor: Jack Lowden, Benediction

The best lead male performance of the year, astonishing, real ones know (my parasocial critic friends who also kept bringing him up)

Supporting Actress: Kristen Stewart, Crimes of the Future

Haha what the fuck <3

Lead Actress: Tang Wei, Decision To Leave

She's so key to the lingering quality this one had on me. A masterclass in rendering an enigmatic performance that somehow isn't opaque. Enchanting, in a magic trick kind of way.

Director: Dean Fleischer Camp, Marcel the Shell With Shoes On

This man deserves more credit for spending seven years carefully making a stop motion movie with his brilliant ex-wife and managing to find exactly this emotional balance of soft and spiky and grieving and hopeful. Lovely work.

Adapted Screenplay: Dan Trachtenberg and Patrick Aison, Prey

Tight, tight, tight action filmmaking. And love you, Amber Midthunder!

Costumes: Alex Bovaird, Nope, and Amela Bakšić, Murina

Two words: Keke Palmer, and those two swimsuits.

[study-with-aura]

Monday, September 9, 2024

I know I have not updated in nearly a week, but it has been very busy around here! I have started volunteering at the mission for seven total hours on Fridays and Saturdays and then yesterday, we have our church Bible Study group that started up again after the morning service and I had my first meeting for the volunteer leadership program that I'm participating in. Everyone is so wonderful, and I think I am going to really enjoy being a part of this team!

School work is picking up as well, so I am spending some time on the weekend doing extra studying. This upcoming weekend will be wonderful though. I won't be volunteering on Saturday or going to dance because our Girl Scout troop is having an outing. It is a two hour or so drive to get where we are going. It's sort of a kick off to the year, even though the new troop year doesn't start until October. The rest of this month, we'll be meeting on Sundays in order to do our planning for the upcoming year, at least us older girls, and to kick off the year with the whole troop and our families.

Next week, I also start volunteering at the library again for two hours a week. It doesn't seem like much, but the hours add up and we do a lot of good work for the community during that time. That will be nine volunteer hours total each week plus two or more extra hours once or twice a month for the volunteer leadership program.

Needless to say, this year is off to an incredible start! I would love to post every day again like I had been doing, but my goal is only twice a week. As long as I stick to that, it will be okay, but I will post as often as I am able to above that as well.

Have an amazing week!

Tasks Completed:

Algebra 2 - Reviewed graphs of linear inequalities + learned to graph systems of linear inequalities + practice

American Literature - Copied vocabulary terms + read about Henry David Thoreau + read chapter 5 "Solitude" from Walden by Thoreau + answered questions + read about rhetorical strategies used by writers + worked on my reflective essay

Spanish 3 - Wrote a 15-sentence dialogue asking for and receiving directions

Bible 2 - Read 1 Kings 6

Early American History - Read about Pennsylvania and Delaware + read excerpts from Penn's "Frame of Government" + looked at a painting 'Penn's Treaty' + answered questions + ungraded quiz (100%)

Earth Science with Lab - Read chapter 7, "The Fossil Record" + read over the questions

Music Appreciation - Learned about the piccolo + learned about the bass clarinet + learned about keyboards, mostly the celeste + copied major necessary terms from the N section of the music dictionary

Khan Academy - Completed US History Unit 2: Lesson 3.6

Duolingo - Studied for approximately 30 minutes (Spanish + French + Chinese) + completed daily quests

Piano - Practiced for three hours in one hour split sessions

Reading - Read pages 119-153 of The Do-Over by Lynn Painter

Chores -  Cleaned my bathroom + cleaned windows in my bedroom and in the study

Activities of the Day:

September Study (John 14:12, Hebrews 6:18, Luke 7:22, 1 Corinthians 12-13, 2 Corinthians 5:14)

Personal Bible Study (1 John 5)

Ballet

Contemporary

Journal/Mindfulness

[mejomonster]

I used a grammar checker yesterday and i'm still frustrated. Like the new Microsoft Word, it underlined like 77 words as grammar or spelling errors which weren't. Things like expecting me to remove a period (sentences and paragraphs can't end on empty space... they need periods), correcting words like space to spae (the word space was indeed correctly spelled as space...), just in general having no idea how punctuation works (a good reason to reference punctuation with a guide as a writer... because automated grammar checkers make frequent mistakes checking punctuation and aren't reliable). And while i expected those sucky mistakes from a grammar checker (but i'm still frustrated as like... in 2010 at least if i ran spell check on it's own i'd get 90-99% correct replacements and only occasional incorrect spelling suggestions... now spell check is more like 20% accurate so i am better off proofreading for spelling errors myself the slow way). I was ultimately using it just to check my writing tenses. Because switching from past to present tense sometimes happens in stories with flashbacks, and people thinking back to older moments and thoughts, so I wanted to quickly machine check if I'd been inconsistent with my tenses and used the wrong one somewhere. Not a single tense error was flagged by the grammar checker. Maybe i got lucky and didn't make any. But i think it's more likely the grammar checker was just completely incapable of checking for tense, let alone accurately (since it gave 80% false errors for spelling then i imagine it'd flag a lot of correct tense usage as incorrect anyway if it could). I picked a grammar checker FOR it's inclusion of checking for tenses. And it didn't even do that.

It's just fruatrating because like. When i was a kid and a teen, you could run a grammar check and mostly get some quick useful spelling corrections (unless you wrote a name) and it only flagged grammar it was usually correctly identifying (such as changing a comma to a ; or an uncapitalized first letter of a sentence to a capital letter, or replacing a misused word like too with two). You'd get maybe 10 flagged errors in a 2 page essay, at least 8 were usually real errors in spelling or grammar (with maybe 1 being an incorrect suggestion to switch ; with , or to spell a name differently). It was fairly useful, took 2 minutes or less to go through. Now in 2020s if i run a 2 page piece of writing into a grammar checker, i get 77 errors flagged and only 3 are real errors (a missing letter in spelling for 3 words, and a missing comma in a long sentence). It takes longer to manually check all 77 errors and notice why they're actually suggesting i make my writing worse... compared to just rereading with a critical eye. But the grammar checkers WOULD BE FASTER AND EFFICIENT if they just quickly flagged real spelling errors like they used to! I know i may always need to check grammar errors myself, technology has always been fairly bad at something that complex to identify. But spelling? Really? Why is machine spell checking so fucking bad now? Why is it flagging so many correctly spelled words now? It's brutal.

I edited a 600 page book a year back with modern word. The book was already edited, publish worthy, i just was formatting it for print and running spell check in case i backspaced and messed up a word here or there when editing the format for print. The Word grammar check flagged 800 errors. At least 95% were not real errors. The last 5% were mostly names getting incorrectly (but understandable from a machine) flagged as spelled wrong. And maybe 5 errors in the entire 800 error heap were actual missing periods I had messed up in formatting and needed to add back. It took like 10 hours to go through those 800 flagged errors and manually check. Whereas years ago, if only actual spelling errors got flagged, i could've probably gone through those 5 errors and maybe 50 incorrectly flagged names in 10 minutes.

[ephhemeralite]

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who reblogged something from you! get to know your mutuals and followers ♡

(–couthbbg <3)

woag hi 👋!!! this one is gonna be long bc 1) chatterbox 2) its so so important to talk abt the good things. so i will be doing so at length

i really enjoy getting into things that have like. a lot going on? i like when there's a lot to learn and it takes a while to piece it all together. hockey is like this (shit ton of teams, players, rules, surrounding culture, history, stats, etc!!) as is, say, star wars. batman was like this when i first got into it too!!

bugs!!!!!!!!!!! bugs. i love bugs. i just wrote a poem yesterday about mosquitoes. i wrote a giant paper on cicadas my freshman year and it altered my whole brain i think. deep emotional ties to fireflies. big feelings about little guys

poems and music... grouped together but i adore poetry. i love poetry so much. i love to write poetry i love to read it i love to interpret it i love to gather and compare it i love to criticize it. wrote an essay last semester on in a station at the metro by ezra pound bc my prof said she didn't think anyone would (seeing as its. a 14 word poem). i could and would talk about poetry forever. life's passion

my loved ones.... like i mean obviously but its worth saying. having experienced not having support, not having friends or family, it really makes you appreciate just how important those connections are, which isn't even taking into consideration how my people are the best people objectively (deeply subjectively). muah i love y'all

the sunset!!!!!!!!!!!! mentioned something related to this to cara recently but seeing the sunset to me is this convenient reminder that the world and life can and is. so beautiful. and you don't have to do anything special for the beauty to find you bc its literally right above you. no matter where you are if you are alive to experience it the beauty will find you!!!!!!!!!

[iephos]

14 January 2024

I studied yesterday & today at the library. It wasn’t for as long, nor as in-depth as I planned but I still made some slight headway. The more I do the more I realise there is left to do and it’s quite overwhelming.

I wrote an essay (though it wasn’t very good) and did some humanities studying.

Then today I did science and maths. But I was falling asleep at the table! 5 hrs sleep is the culprit…I came home and managed to do an additional 2 hrs maths and could weirdly concentrate better all of a sudden.

I really hope consistency will save me here.