#essay recommendations

[thodi]

NOVEMBER ‘23 READINGS

Period Food Cravings Really Exist and Have a Scientific Basis, Study Shows • prose

Carl Jung's Midlife-Crisis Notebooks • prose

I Remember Arthur • prose (tw: suicide)

Distractions • comics

It's not just you. LinkedIn has gotten really weird. • prose

100 Ways To Thrive Outside Of Capitalism • prose

The Myth of Self-Sufficiency • prose

City Arts & Lectures Presents Ocean Vuong • video

My Saturday Self Versus My Sunday Self • prose

Saving the World Like a Savarna • prose

The artefacts of our lives • prose

The big sleep: a photography book captures subjects in slumber • prose, photography

The Inside Job • prose

The Man Who Thinks He Can Live Forever • prose

Art of Darkness • prose

Too Tired Project • instagram page

Migratory Flights • prose

The Race to Catch the Last Nazis • prose

To move toward fully living • prose

Cooking with Wool: Pasta with Red Sauce • video

what’s earned, what’s not • prose

Visualisation and Why We Don’t Need it to Make Visual Art • prose

The Protagonist Is Never in Control • prose (tw: abuse)

URL Poetry Club • web

Thank You, Pamela • prose

Mere Belief • prose

Remembering Louise Glück (1943-2023) • prose

Museum Of Lost Memories • instagram page

science told me to go outside • prose, comic

To the Groundskeeper of Lodi Garden • prose (from this anthology)

Voices on Addiction: Searching for My Mother’s Ocean • prose (tw: alcohol, substance abuse, self-harm)

The Glitch Gallery • art, web

The Dutch Word for Gift • prose, art

Mary Oliver on the Mystery of the Human Psyche, the Secret of Great Poetry, and How Rhythm Makes Us Come Alive • prose

A Brief Guide for Navigating Toomuchery • prose

Hold Your Breath Up To The Mirror and Draw Yourself a New Face • poetry

Wisława Szymborska & the Poetry of Existence • prose

'Does Melancholy Foster Creativity?' • prose

What’s Special About This Number? • web

What does a happily ever after look like? • prose, web

tag list (reach out if you want to be tagged on these!) - @then-child-make-another @quesadillayuri

#j.recs #words #art #prose #narrative #reading list #poetry #personal #reading recommendations #essay recommendations #to be read #writing #health #carl jung #linkedin #social commentary #mental health #capitalism #psychology #ocean vuong #instagram #humour #web design #photography #grief #investigative #life #science #patent #history

[throesofincreasingwonder]

"A story doesn't need a theme in order to be good" I'm only saying this once but a theme isn't some secret coded message an author weaves into a piece so that your English teacher can talk about Death or Family. A theme is a summary of an idea in the work. If the story is "Susan went grocery shopping and saw a weird bird" then it might have themes like 'birds don't belong in grocery stores' or 'nature is interesting and worth paying attention to' or 'small things can be worth hearing about.' Those could be the themes of the work. It doesn't matter if the author intended them or not, because reading is collaborative and the text gets its meaning from the reader (this is what "death of the author" means).

Every work has themes in it, and not just the ones your teachers made you read in high school. Stories that are bad or clearly not intended to have deep messages still have themes. It is inherent in being a story. All stories have themes, even if those themes are shallow, because stories are sentences connected together for the purpose of expressing ideas, and ideas are all that themes are.

#original post #text post #500 #1k #2k #btw i know my definition of death of the author is loosey goosey here #it wasn't the main point so i went informal with it! as ppl in the tags have pointed out it isn't exact #and i do recommend reading the wikipedia article or similar (possibly even the essay itself if you're narsty) if you want to learn more! #wasn't expecting this to take off so my apologies to my barthes-heads out there #love you mwah #5k #10k #15k #20k

[ink-ghoul]

now to my fave minecraft worldbuilding topic

what can you cook? what's edible? what's possible with enough imagination?

I'd like to start with things that are present in-game (vanilla), first, the foods and drinks (ingredients too), having a loaf of bread with a nice mushroom stew seasoned with dandelions for breakfast is an option taken straight from the game

now let's say that I take the apples, wheat, milk, sugar and eggs to make an apple pie, that isn't in the game, but it's something possible to craft

in an extend things like salt can exist because the presence of sea water, same as things like bacon (pigs), cheese (milk) and so on

what if I throw the existing leaves in hot water to make tea?

or since all the dyes have an organic source can I make a rainbow cake?

how you cook things must be important too I imagine, maybe steak cooked in the smoker tastes way better than cooked with a fire aspect sword

#this is to all the 'mumbo eats redstone' enthusiasts #yes redstone is an edible mineral #but I guess just like salt it isn't recommended in large quantities #alcoholic drinks are possible too why not vodka (potatoes) wine (sweet berries) rum (sugarcane) #I could pull an 2 hour essay about the gastromy possibilities of minecraft #minecraft #minecraft worldbuilding #food mention #alcohol mention (in the tags) #side note but this is sad news for us mexicans because neither tomatoes or corn or chiles exist here. I'm devasted

[druidmilk]

In light of hbomberguys new video here’s some video essayists with way too little followers that you should go support:

CopsHateMoe

Alexander Avila

Jessie Gender

Aranock

Mia Mulder

The leftist cooks

Elle literacy

Lilly Simpson

Thinkpiece Tribe

Overthinking it

Verilybitchie

Philosynoir

Geekouter

Orowen

Rowan Ellis

Dr Fatima

Lu Vagara

Ponderful

Artie Carden

Tirrrb

Brigitte Empire

JohntheDuncan

Caelan Conrad

Kaz Rowe

Hoots

AnRel

I know a lot of these are mentioned at the end of the video but their some of my faves so :)

There are probably so many more that I forgot, please let me know any recommendations people have

#hbomberguy #video essay #james somerton #you tube #lgbt #queer #transgender #lgbtq #video recommendation

[tubersops]

I’ve seen a lot of posts about how hbomb “came out” in his plagiarism video, which made me realize the video where he actually publicly came out, Outsiders: How To Adapt H.P. Lovecraft in the 21st Century, is one of his least viewed videos, which is a shame!

I think the title probably threw a lot of people off, so a lot of people aren’t aware that it’s not just a generic video about how to adapt books, but a deeply personal and beautiful essay about how he watched a queer adaptation of Shadow Over Innsmouth before coming out and after, and how the experience of accepting his sexuality and coming out to his family and friends changed how he viewed the film, and how he viewed films and life in general from that point forward.

If you see this post and you haven’t already, please, please take a moment to watch this video., especially if you’re a queer person. It really is one of the most relatable and deeply moving video essays I’ve seen and it deserves just as many if not more views than his more popular videos. And it’s only 30 minutes long!

#hbomberguy #youtube #video essay #video essay recommendations

[ohnoitstbskyen]

no one knows who created skull trumpet (until now) by Jeffiot

An internet deep dive into the history of the skeleton trumpet GIF that explodes in memes every Halloween.

Jeffiot takes a long trip through Wayback Machine archives and posts of reposts of reposts to find out who made the GIF, and meditates a bit on what it means to have your art exist so far beyond the context in which it was first created.

#youtube #video essay #recommendation

[thesiltverses]

Hello! I found the silt verses about three weeks ago and have listened to it several times since. I have a few things to say.

I absolutely adore that episode about the national grid workers. I think it’s my favorite episode of any podcast I’ve ever listened to. My favorite part of that first episode Paige is in is how she justifies not standing up for Vaughn, that cognitive dissonance that you wrote so well. This episode gives me what I wanted from that episode, the workers all banding together to stop the wasteful sacrifice of one of them. The actor who played the foreman did an incredible job as well. I think that having him discuss which of his workers he would sacrifice was such a significant moment, despite how brief it is. It cuts right to the big question that I took away from the podcast which is, “How much is someone willing to sacrifice in order to maintain their comfort?” And the utter disrespect of Glodditch (apologies for the spelling) refusing to cancel even the radio but asking grid workers to kill themselves for 200kw/h! Top tier episode.

I grew up in the south and went to college in Appalachia. I saw the disparity in technology and “advancement” if that makes sense that poverty brings, and the way you set up the world invokes that feeling in me again. You are an amazing world builder and storyteller.

I really enjoyed the cameos - I’m a big fan of malevolent/devisor, Old gods of Appalachia, and all of Jonny sims work, so hearing familiar voices was an absolute delight. Harlan Guthrie as an acolyte of the snuff gods might have been a bit too on the nose with some of the things that man writes, though… /pos

I’m transmasculine, and something that I really appreciate is how you manage to make a trans man do some objectively awful things, but still manage to make him a complex, full character that I was rooting for very frequently. Brother Faulkner is so, so important to me as a character. Paula Vogel has a play called “Indecent,” which is about the true story of a troupe of I believe German Jewish actors between the years of 1910ish and 1940s putting on a show called “God of Vengeance” by Sholem Asch, also a Jewish man. “God of Vengeance” has queer themes and received a lot of criticism from the Jewish community for showing Jewish folks in a “bad” light at a time when there was already so much hatred for Jewish people. Brother Faulkner being as complex and, in my opinion, malicious and cutthroat as he is at a time when trans people face so much bigotry, especially legislatively in the United States, brings this conversation about “God of Vengeance” up again for me. I also love how normalized non-binary people are in this world, without question. “Sibling this or that,” the hunter, adjudicator Shrew - big thanks from me for all of this.

All of this to say, I love this podcast. Can you talk more about the rhetorical gods? Is Babble one? What makes them one if they are, or why aren’t they? I’m fascinated by them. Can you talk more about the propaganda gods too?

Thank you so much for the thoughtful and kind words!

I'll check out Indecent, it sounds really interesting and I'm very glad to hear Faulkner works for you as a character. I think the topic of how to include and write queer characters who are capable of terrible things and thoughts (because, after all, these characters are human beings and not tutelary exemplars), within the context of both a rising movement of transphobia right now and centuries-old scapegoating / pathologising portrayals more generally, is a really knotty but a really important one, and I always want to make sure I'm approaching it with care and due responsibility as well as a sense of humility around the limitations of what, as a cis writer, I can actually achieve.

To that end, I don't want to ever take the audience response for granted, but I'm always really grateful to hear that the portrayal is working for a listener!

Propaganda gods: gods whose prayer-marks or ritual verses are fed directly to the enemy, enforcing destructive or sabotaging changes to reality (so rather than sending a destructive saint or angel to rampage over the foe, you might drop pamphlets or send radio messages to the enemy to 'convert' them).

Rhetorical gods: gods whose followers possess reality-warping powers of language itself (which is why 'rhetorical god' is a polite way of saying 'liar's god'). In other words, the paranoia around them comes partly down to the fact that a disciple like Val may appear to be a limitless shaper of new forms, rather than shaped into a limited form of their own, as a result of their worship.

#carmen maria machado has a fun mini-essay about queer villainous portrayals which I do recommend

[mads-is-tired]

i have a new favourite genre of youtube video to play All At Once

#its genuinely helping me stay on track of my essay #i'll get distracted and drift off and one of the sounds will go off and bring me back #i started with just pikmin but i kept getting recommendations and the collection grew #pikmin is the most effective though #mads makes a post

[iridescentmirrorsgenshin]

An example of queercoding in Alhaitham and Kaveh's relationship: Madam Faruzan edition

Due to the rules in place for game development in China, the possibility for queer confirmation within Genshin Impact is denied, which therefore renders the usage of characters alluding to the potential romantic connection between two same-sex characters as impossible. However, the same insinuation can be made by omitting specific language which strictly conveys romantic sentiments, such as ‘couple’. Instead, the idea of secrecy or something unmentionable can be drawn upon as indicators, as this draws parallels to the taboo of homosexuality practiced within certain cultures and media forms, which the real world audience can identify.  

For example, Alhaitham and Kaveh as secret housemates. This can be used to convey an idea of ‘taboo’ as Kaveh desires to protect his reputation by concealing his shame of having to live with Alhaitham. In-game, the context here is that Kaveh wants to uphold his reputation of a successful architect, but within Alhaitham’s Story Quest, upon the player’s discovery of Kaveh living with Alhaitham, this context is omitted for some time. This prompts Paimon to question what exactly Alhaitham and Kaveh’s relationship is, with Kaveh denying that the two used to be friends but are not anymore: “I wouldn’t say ‘friends’ exactly”.

This tactic of double entendre can be seen again in A Parade of Providence when Paimon almost reveals Kaveh’s living situation to Faruzan.

Faruzan’s can be observed to resort to a thinking pose, in comparison with Layla, when Alhaitham is mentioned in relation to Kaveh wanting to buy property, as Paimon almost ‘outs’ the truth, that Kaveh resides with Alhaitham.

She then seemingly dwells upon the subject, as she returns to it after Kaveh requests for a change of topic later in the conversation. Here, Faruzan follows up on whether Kaveh lives alone, which he fails to deny. 

Here, it can be seen that she has already began associating Kaveh and Alhaitham, possibly speculating that the two live together. When Kaveh fails to supply an answer, therefore not denying her theory, she explicitly ties the two together, and asks if the two are “hiding” something.  

This question evokes a physical reaction from Kaveh, as he denies this question out of fear of being revealed, with Paimon opting to leave in order to cover her role in revealing Kaveh’s predicament.  

A deliberate potentiality has been created here in regard to what Faruzan has inferred, as her phrasing of “are you two hiding something from me?” is non-specific. Rather than asking: “are you two living together?”, she asks a question which holds multiple connotations. Due to the ambiguity of her meaning, her question can be observed as a non-explicit version of the: “are you two a couple?” question.

On the surface, this question is a reference to their situation as roommates, however, her phrasing is non-specific, and hints to another cause for “hiding” something. For Faruzan, Kaveh’s blatant evasion of the topic and dismissal of Alhaitham’s name, could easily be inferred as “hiding” a romantic connection – which is something that the player, too, can pick up on from her gesture of suspicion, her inquisitive questioning, and her excitement when piecing together the clues. The ambiguity of her question generates multiple meanings as to why she has surmised the two could be “hiding”.  

This overt secrecy in Kaveh’s living with Alhaitham, another man, prompts the player to generate associations between this in-game secrecy and real world queer shame. In this, there is an implication of the need for Kaveh to confirm the status of his relationship between him and Alhaitham. Not only does this scene connotate an ‘outing’, in which a queer character has their queerness forcibly revealed to a heteronormative audience, but this creates a sense of secrecy, which, again, can be interpreted by the player as ‘taboo’.  

Kaveh does not want to tell anyone of his living situation out of preserving his stellar reputation, however, Faruzan is missing this context. She relates Alhaitham and Kaveh together in the phrasing “you two”, coupling them together in a secret that they “hid[e]”. The player understands this as indicating to their living situation, however, this creates a separate context which Faruzan has interpreted and that, we, as the audience are not privy to, but can interpret based on her allusions to cohabitation between two men being a secret.

Whilst this is not explicitly romantic within Genshin’s world of nameless sexuality, Faruzan’s ambiguous questioning here draws parallels between real world understanding of sexuality and the connotations of queerness which stems from two men living together in secret. 

(Update: For more analyses like this, the essay this is taken from is now uploaded! It can be accessed here and here as as a pdf <3)

#faruzan needs to run away from these two im so sorry you dont deserve this #queercoding is alive and real in genshin impact #but we already knew that #the fact that alhaitham and kaveh are roommates but in secret is already extremely telling #and it's stressed that they are ROOMMATES and not landlord/tenant #this is just one example of queercoding from the queercoding section of the essay but i was going insane over it #i really recommend watching this particular part of a parade of providence because the stills of the animations dont do it justice #also why did faruzan react like THAT #that was not a normal reaction to have if you find out two colleagues platonically live together #the writing genshin is crazy #lets all be crazy together <3 #haikaveh #kavehtham #kavetham #alhaitham #kaveh #haikaveh meta #genshin meta

[neon-witch-ritual]

Does anyone remember MirrorMask ?

Like I had this very weird memory of this film and for a LONG time I couldn't find absolutely anything about it. I remembered the scene in the circus with the ambulance, the dark daughter look and- I think I always thought it was something Alice related (eating at a table, weird imagery, fantasy etc.), and then the final scene with the painted door/window on the roof

BUT THEN-

This lovely person did a video essay

And ALL the memories came flooding back (and of course Neil G was involved in this story)

And I have no idea if anyone else remembers this film

#mirrormask #video essay #video recommendation #random memory #Youtube #neil gaiman #related

[jaratedeguadalupe]

life update: i still don't how how to use the vaccinator

#revamping my entire artstyle #the tf2 pill is kicking in #i have traded my precious 3 hour long video essays for random audiobooks my friends keep recommending me while i draw #surprisingly there's a lot of free audiobooks on youtube #unsurprisingly the quality is dookie water #i'm so invested in this story that it's borderline distracting #a double edged sword #anyways i've played soldier and soldier alone for 2.5 weeks straight #and i'm proud to say that i can do a successful rocket jump 7/10 times #jaratemisu #tf2 #team fortress two #team fortress 2 #tf2 medic #tf2 fanart

[thodi]

JANUARY ‘24 READINGS

Energetic Aliens • prose

A Place to Stay, Untouched by Death • prose

“Let Movies Be Movies” Begs the Question - What Are Movies? • prose

Murmurations • video

To catch a catfish • prose

switching to a "dumb" phone made me feel pretty dang smart • prose

Tokyo Walk, TBOT Cover, Aloneness - Notes on aloneness vs. solitude • prose

Cat Singing Blues • video

Victoria Adukwei Bulley's "There You Are" • poetry, prose

What I want to say most • prose

What Kind Of Future Does De-Extinction Promise? • prose

How it Feels to Brainstorm • comic

A Work of Love • prose

“Intimacy in the Telling”: A Conversation with Maggie Smith • prose

Damages • prose

The Year in Authenticity • prose

Ahead of Time • prose, poetry

The Thing That Is Silence • prose

Hungry For Education • prose

On Beauty and Violence • prose

Mary Oliver's "Some Questions You Might Ask" • poetry, prose

We are different from all other humans in history • prose

Don't Forget to Write • prose

Your Brain on Books: You Are What You Read • prose

In Proportion • comic

subscribe to The Good Side of the Internet for monthly recs like this, and to thodi for weekly poetry and song recommendations plus a sometimes-nonsensical-sometimes-profound-sometimes-toopersonal article <3

tag list (reach out if you want to be tagged on these!) - @then-child-make-another @quesadillayuri

#january #words #art #reading recommendations #essay recommendations #reading list #j.recs #photography #nature #architecture #prose #narrative #essay #to be read #death #grief #music #personal #poetry #substack #investigative #essay recommendation #history #film #science #biology #maggie smith

[flamevbirdv]

video essayists for these trying times!

I watch a lot of youtube so I thought I could round up some recs!

verilybitchie my favorite of the list. bi, trans lense on queer media. expert on calling out lazy representation. famously known for their video "good lgbt representation is boring" but my favorite is a bisexual history of dracula

The Morbid Zoo incredibly smart and sharp commentary on movies and social media. horror fan, clown fan, twilight apologist. my favorite video of hers is the pale man:physical fascism

Maggie Mae Fish powerhouse of the media analysis sphere. I learn so much every time I watch any of her videos. very clear spoken and funny. if you haven't checked her out yet this is your sign. some of her greates hits are "LGBT in fantasy" "superman won't save the cat" "fight club, an analysis" but loki, stalker & the war on terror blew my mind

Princess Weekes bi black icon. the place to go for videos on pop culture, race, feminism, etc. her video how true crime reveals the corruption of the legal system changed my life, no hyperbole. also check out her video on "purity culture & fandom"

Rowan Ellis queer media and history. recently tackles cultural issues like "the infantilization of millenial women" and "corporate queerbaiting" the problem with activist characters is a personal favorite of mine

Ladyknightthebrave a channel with less videos than most of the folks above but you need to watch her video on holocaust cinema

Quality Culture channel shared by two people who love movies (and music!) and research the shit out of their videos. some I really enjoyed are "death note: finding meaning in a meaningless world" "the iron giant: a study in heartfeel film making" and the conflicting ideals of hayao miyazaki

The Princess and the Scrivener it's been a while since they uploaded a video but if you are a fan of disney, these are your gals. however I have to reccomend their videos on dissability and ableism "the wonder of misscasting" and the shape of ableism a joke on the shape of water, yes this video is that old

BONUS!

Elliot Sang he talks about the real world with probably the most nuanced view I've seen from a youtuber ever. another list of greatest hits: "ADHD: a nightmare under capitalism" " is tik tok ruining music?" and "the problem with video essays" LMAO

#video essay #queer media #queer analysis #youtube #james somerton #adyacent #recommendations #mine #bisexuals make the best videos XD #hbomberguy

[spearxwind]

i have signalis on my wishlist and know nothing outside of the steam trailer and description and also people calling it yuri so i had to personally tell you that this post is Scaring Me.

You should absolutely play signalis the lesbians are real however they come with The Horrors and they are inseparable from each other

#this game has changed my brain chemistry after blasting through it i watched 5 hours of video essays on it #ask #anon #10000% recommend the game

[troythecatfish]

Here’s my personal recommendation of a YouTube video to check out:

#curious archive #speculative evolution #speculative biology #speculative zoology #specevo #spec evo #spec bio #specbio #spec zoo #worldbuilding #worldbuilding stuff #art movement #video essay #art history #history #evolution #art #tumblr recommendations #recommend #recommendation #youtube #youtube content #youtube recommendations #youtube video #video recommendation #youtube link #video link

[cozylittleartblog]

being depressed sucks, but at the same time it did stop me from drawing illuminaughti fanart like four days before the shit(tm) popped off with her back in may

silver linings i guess

#not art #i like listening to video essays and shit while i draw and work and i ended up listening to a lot of her videos back then #extremely funny to get into a youtuber and then not two weeks later they are the worst person of 2023 #cool sona design! shame it belongs to Her #yeah i think about this every time i see a new drama video abt her in my youtube recommended feed #i would be so mad if i drew her and then had to delete it wbhsdjhbdsfg saved me the energy #also the plagarism stuff from hbomb was THE icing on the cake. oh my god. she blew herself up being upset that someone else #was copying her when she literally copies other people all the damn time #flaming mess of a youtube channel my god