Tumgik
#explainer
midstpodcast · 14 hours
Text
What is a Tearror, the sudden surreal force that reshapes the Fold? 🌊💡
Let out wondrous Junior Lore Keeper Jared Deiro explain in his latest deep dive into the MIDST Cosmos! 🧡
38 notes · View notes
northgazaupdates · 3 months
Text
The UN has made the claim that they distribute food in Gaza twice a week. They have made similar claims several times, explaining that hunger is still an issue because they are only able to distribute food two times a week.
However, some on the ground in north Gaza say this statement is dishonest. When the UN makes these statements, it implies that it is servicing the entire Gaza Strip. They are not. Due to Israeli blockade, absolutely no aid of any kind has reached northern Gaza in about two months.
People in northern Gaza are starving to death because there is no food, none. Some report having to make bread out of animal feed, eat cardboard, and drink seawater and dirty puddles. What little food can be scrounged up is not enough to support anyone’s nutritional needs, let alone those of 800,000 people.
If people in the central and southern regions are still starving, even with the UN and partners brining in food twice a week, imagine the state of people in the north. If even adults in the north are reporting severe hunger pains, imagine what children are experiencing.
The point of this post is not *necessarily* to lambast the UN, although there is plenty of reason to do so. Rather, it is to address one source of misunderstanding which is impeding some people’s ability to grasp the full breadth of the catastrophe in the north.
6K notes · View notes
tonyzaret · 4 months
Text
Full video here:
youtube
81 notes · View notes
ctkvi · 1 year
Text
A recently commissioned animated explainer video for Disperif Capitaux
Do you need an explainer video for your business?
We can do that for you, feel free to email or message on our chat messenger bottom right of the official website.
We will be in touch within 24 hours!
Have budget in mind.
CTKVI.STORE INSTAGRAM
218 notes · View notes
whenweallvote · 2 months
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Not sure what kind of primary your state has? 🤔 We’ve got you.
Remember: some states require you to register with a party in order to vote. Register to vote or update your registration at weall.vote/register.
17 notes · View notes
himehikoshrine · 4 months
Text
Jack Jeanne Explainers: Takarazuka Revue
Tumblr media
This post is a quick and probably incomplete overview of Takarazuka Revue specifically for the context of its inspiration on Jack Jeanne, for reference. It's a basic overview but it's not intended as a guide to the form and fandom.
Takarazuka Revue (JP: 宝塚歌劇団) is likely the most direct influence on the game. It also has a very dedicated fan base that maintains robust English Language resources, so if this aspect of things intrigues you, it is quite accessible to dive further into.
Takarazuka Revue is an all-female musical theater company founded in 1913 and based out of the city of Takarazuka. All roles, male and female, are played by women. It also has an associated training school, the Takarazuka Music School.
The original pitch for the game was an All Boys Revue School, so the reference starts at the very beginning, as a kind of gender swap of Takarazuka.
You may notice that the term used here for "Revue" 『歌劇』 is the same one that the game uses. It gets translated sometimes as "opera" sometimes as "theater" - in general the term does mean "opera" but it's pretty clearly not opera that they're training - it's being used as "Revue" the same way that Takarazuka uses it. Which is, loosely speaking, musical theater.
Continued below the cut --
(I suspect that the similarities in first sound and also first character between 宝塚 - Takarazuka and 玉阪 - Tamasaka are intentional as well)
Takarazuka was founded by a businessman looking for an attraction to draw people to the city and settled on the idea of an All Female Musical Revue and a focus on more western style musical, mostly, as far as I know, as a business decision and a feeling that traditional styles of Kabuki were falling out of favor with most people. It drew heavily from French Musical Revue. The full history of the company, like I said, is well documented in English, and is longer than I can get into, here.
Compare and contrast this to the information we get about the 13th Himehiko, the current principal's great-grandfather, Chuza Dairi. He's said to have been born during the Meiji era and lived into the Showa era, and was fascinated by western style musicals. He's credited with the name Univeil, and starting to use the Jack and Jeanne terms.
Takarazuka stands in contrast to a long line of male exclusive theater forms in Japan. Japan, of course, also puts on co-ed musicals, both originals and adaptations, like the rest of the world, but Takarazuka is very much, to use the phrase the game uses, the "pinnacle of all-female revues."
Tumblr media
This image is of a showcase from 1930, where you can see the lavish, european revue style inspiration clearly.
In Takarazuka, male roles are called otokoyaku (男役) - which just means 'men's roles' and is the term Jack Jeanne uses for what "Jack" roles are. Female roles are called musumeyaku (娘役) - which translates to 'girl/maiden/daughter roles'. The game actually uses onnayaku (女役) or women's roles when introducing Jeannes.
(Worth noting that the character Kisa plays in the Newcomers' Performance is translated as Maiden but is 娘 (musume) in Japanese which means occasionally when she or other characters are talking about "playing the role of the maiden" they are saying "musumeyaku" which I think is probably an intentional reference.)
Takarazuka puts on Musicals as well as both song and dance revues. It adapts many things, from extant musicals to manga to film, as well as history and classic stories. It has a reputation for being bright, sparkly, and lavish in costuming and set design and dramatic in style.
The voice actor for Tancho, the singing teacher and head of Rhodonite, is a former Takarazuka Otokoyaku. Tancho's outfits and style of speech are directly taken from Takarazuka. The feathers Tancho wears are part of the standard Revue portion of Takarazuka shows.
Tumblr media
Right - Tancho's image, from the website, Left - Tancho's voice actor, Nanami Hiroki, from the Asashi article announcing her retirement from Takarazuka, showing her wearing one of the typical feather backed outfits that leads appear in parades after performances.
Otokoyaku are the stars of Takarazuka and tend to draw the biggest crowd and they get top billing, though each troupe tends to have a top Otokoyaku and top Musumeyaku, decided by a complex mix of seniority (especially for otokoyaku) and gradings. I will stop short of saying these are kind of like Jack Ace and Al Jeannes of a class, though. The Musumeyaku is expected to support her Otokoyaku. Using the terms Jack Jeanne uses, for Takarazuka, the Otokoyaku is essentially always the Flower, the Musumeyaku the Vessel, which is more standardized than the point of view of characters at Univeil.
The top Otokoyaku and top Musumeyaku are called the Top Combi (コンビ). Takarazuka and its fandom use that, rather than Partner (パートナー) that Jack Jeanne is fond of, which carries a potentially romantic connotation.
Takarazuka expects its actresses to maintain a more masculine or very feminine (depending on their role) persona on and off stage, and the expectations for behavior and appearance are quite strict even off stage. For example, much like Idols, they are expected to not date, let alone marry and have kids, until they retire.
EDIT: Someone who knows more than me let me know that the rules for dating are slightly more lax now, and relationships are tolerated so long as they are kept strictly out of the public eye - though still no marriage.
Jack Jeanne remains frustratingly vague on the rules for this during school -- No one seems to think dating itself is an issue, but Ao does say that it would 'cause trouble' if people saw them holding hands. So perhaps we're supposed to imagine something similar? But back to the post.
Takarazuka is divided into several different Troupes (組, kumi, read as gumi when used after the name of a troupe). They currently have five.
They break down as follows
Flower Troupe (Hanagumi 花組) - 1921 Moon Troupe (Tsukigumi 月組) - 1921 Snow Troupe (Yukigumi 雪組) - 1924 Star Troupe (Hoshigumi 星組) -1933-1939, reestablished 1948 Cosmos Troupe (Soragumi 宙組) - 1998
Each troupe has a reputation, though they are fairly loosely followed, and many performances get performed by different troupes for different runs. However, I suspect this was a strong influence on the way the classes were divided in Jack Jeanne. For example, Moon Troupe is known for singing. The newest troupe, the Cosmos Troupe is written with a character in Chui's name, and their stereotype is 'experimental and tall'. Snow troupe, interestingly, is known for more traditionally Japanese works (loosely) which is a conspicuous absence from Univeil, especially considering Tamasakaza's style is said to be more traditional than Takarazuka's -- closer to kabuki, even.
In Takarazuka, stars are sorted into these upon graduation. The Music School is probably better as a whole separate post.
The term "Newcomer's Performance" used in the game to refer to the first show of the year is also used in Takarazuka -- shinjin kouen (新人公演), where it has the meaning of a different casting of a play with all newer Takarasiennes (a term used for the actresses of Takarazuka).
The specific announcement that Tsuki makes in the intro is almost exactly, in both wording and tone, the announcement made before each Takarazuka play. His outfit in that scene is a version of a very famous style of Takarazuka Costume, inspired by fancy French dress and specifically the manga Rose of Versaille, whose adaptation is one of Takarazuka's most iconic plays.
Tumblr media
I would strongly encourage you to browse their official English Language site (or Japanese one, if you can read it), which can be found here : Takarazuka Revue
While you're there, if you're there for Jack Jeanne reasons, it may be interesting to pay attention to the use of the word "dream" which is one of the theme/motif words of Jack Jeanne, and is use heavily in Takarazuka's official material as well as writings on the subject.
Tumblr media
Had to throw this in because these? These are the Takarazuka words right there. Well, their official Motto is "Modesty, Fairness, Grace" or "Be Modest, Be Proper, Be Graceful" (which is a whole lot to unpack elsewhere) but unofficially it could be "So Dreamy and Sparkly."
You'll probably get a more thorough history on the website, too, than I provided.
Rather than make this even longer, I'm going to make a separate post on Takarazuka Music School, the path into Takarazuka, and it's similarities and difference with what we know about Univeil.
I'm by no means an expert of Takarazuka, and I should probably defer to people more involved in the fandom for that, but if anyone has anything to add that I missed in this brief post, please please reblog and add! If you have any questions, I can try to answer, asks should be open!
28 notes · View notes
johnnyjellyjaw · 8 months
Text
CHECK OUT THIS VIDEO AND MY YOUTUBE!
39 notes · View notes
writerupdated · 4 months
Photo
Tumblr media
Understanding the nuances of different copywriting styles will empower you to tailor your message to specific audiences and achieve your goals more effectively.
(via Explainer: 9 major types of copywriting (infographic))
20 notes · View notes
derseprinceoftbd · 6 months
Text
In honor of the new Upd8, here's the updated version of my Personal Homestuck Explainer.
An explainer for Homestuck, typed up on a Google doc for Reddit, and now transplanted onto Tumblr, and too long to fit in a single reddit comment. Most explainers I've seen utterly fail to get the tone of the series across, thus not answering the main question I see: "what is Homestuck *and why is it like this*". Why does it evoke the reactions it does? Why are so many things considered a reference? Who is Vriska? (I can't actually explain that one in under 3000 words, it turns out.) But, here's a briefer briefer (heh) on the subject of "What the actual fuck is Homestuck":
Andrew Hussie, a person (now going by any pronouns) then known for various obscure things around the net, made an interactive reader-driven comic-type-thing called Jailbreak where he would draw panels demonstrating the events of the story as dictated by other posters in the thread, putting his favored suggestions in the narration and responding in kind. The happenings and variables were influenced by his own strange brand of humor and set of fascinations, such as rap, horses, clowns, and H!rry P!tter as a cultural presence. He would eventually compile this, along with the unfinished followup, Bard Quest, on its own website.
The third installment of the so-called MS Paint Adventures, Problem Sleuth, was a massive step up in production value, featuring impressive art and output speed as well as evolutions such as some pages being flashing gifs. This sort of thing was considered to be one of the best demonstrations of the potential of the internet. It ran for 1674 pages over the course of about a year.
Homestuck was the followup to that, running 8123 pages from April 13th 2009-2016 with numerous hiatuses in the latter half of that time. It featured such advancements as videos with sound, small WASD-controlled computer games on various pages, and most significantly, actual conversations between characters, semi-hidden behind clickable boxes at the bottom of some pages, allowing them to become three-dimensional and truly sympathetic. Hussie, it would soon be revealed, was heavily skilled at writing compelling and unique character voices and dialogue writing in general.
Homestuck was definitely the most complex MPSA, with a grand overarching plot being integrated into the results of the actions of the readers. The plot revolved around an in-universe game called SBURB with the power to influence reality, sort of a Jumanji with time-travel mechanics that would soon be revealed to be the centerpiece of reality itself, destroying the home planets of its players to motivate them to enter the world of the game and fulfill an unknown grand purpose, complete with millions of fully sentient NPCs. (Homestuck is, technically, an isekai.)
Homestuck has been described as "a story that's also a puzzle", and this lens has gained authorial approval; events are often told anachronistically, as a kitchen sink of high-concept ideas are explored by a man who sometimes wants to show off his semi-deconstructive version of a classic sci-fi/fantasy trope, sometimes wants to infuriate readers through anticlimaxes and misdirections, and sometimes wants to just go off on a tangent about a random movie from his childhood that somehow soon becomes integral to the plot in an absurdly esoteric fashion.
Eventually the suggestions from readers became so numerous and difficult that the suggestion boxes were closed near the end of the first year, leading to less meandering from Act 4 onwards, but the influence of the audience remained; one easy example is a character only seen from the top half initially being theorized on the official forums as using a wheelchair, a fact which would not only become Canon, but highly relevant.
The early MSPAs curated an audience through programming humor and 80s-90s film references as filtered through the styles of Terry Pratchett, Mark Twain, and the Something Awful forums, but the audience for Homestuck, due to the nature of the characters, was markedly different, especially after the Trolls showed up.
You've probably seen them.
The Trolls, initially presented as some extremely odd and bothersome fellows on the internet, were soon shown to be a race of grey-skinned, orange-horned aliens. Trolls possessed multicolored blood in both organized castes and clear deviations, psychic abilities, unique typing styles, insectoid traits as opposed to hominid, near-universal bisexuality with the sole known exception being Sapphic, and a complex romantic system with its own symbols, comically vague-yet-comprehensive reproductive system, and of course, relationship dynamics.
I cannot express how perfect the Trolls were in terms of catching on. Tumblr loved these fuckers and it's not at all hard to see why.
It's also worth noting that this wasn't the only market-perfect part of Homestuck; Classpecting, the equivalent of Hogwarts Houses, featured a 144/168/288/336/384(depending on who you ask and what they count)-strong grid system of human personality traits that not only seemed eerily accurate as a personality mapper, but corresponded to what elemental powers one received in the game of SBURB.
So... yeah. Homestuck was an incredibly complex and engaging work, driven by a single incredibly talented and flawed creative voice, which was perfectly made to attract a massive, unabashedly bizarre/proudly cringe, and notably largely queer fanbase across a younger internet; you may well be aware of incidents such as cosplay failures and inappropriate recreations of Troll culture. The style of presentation, art, and character writing was instantly recognizable and relatively easy to imitate, leading to fanfiction and even fanmade adventures galore, most of the latter hosted on MSPFA.com.
The main site for Homestuck is broken now-it's recommended that new readers download the [Unofficial Homestuck Collection](https://bambosh.dev/unofficial-homestuck-collection/), and starting with Problem Sleuth to ease into the format and writing is a pretty popular choice. The ending is also considered generally quite poor in a number of ways, particularly regarding unfollowed foreshadowing and blatant abandonment of character arcs, with some fans even [making](https://friendlybatteringram.tumblr.com/tagged/altstuck) their own [works](https://mspfa.com/?s=44153&p=1) as [substitutions](http://mspfa.com/?s=12003&p=1). You can find The Homestuck Epilogues (a sequel novel) on the official site, and Homestuck^2 Beyond Canon (a sequel webcomic after the Epilogues) on its own website, but neither of these are very well liked by fans (at all). YouTube also has several dubs of the comic; by far the largest and most popular is [Voxus](https://youtube.com/@Voxus), which has unfortunately slowed to a crawl at around the 65% mark.
Content warnings for Homestuck include: blood, violence including decapitation, clowns, brainwashing/mental possession, dicks-out furry bara art in the background of like ten pages, brief black-and-white nudity, swearing, the R-slur, a joke about an acronym organically forming the F-slur, child abuse, discussed child abuse and homophobia, mocking of the disabled (as an unsympathetic action), cartoonish levels of sexism (as an unsympathetic action), statements that an antagonist is analogous to Hitler, mocking of otherkin, a minor character being a racial stereotype of Japanese people (Damara), a somewhat major character being a stereotype of Black people (Meenah), minor characters being stereotypes of disabled people (Meulin and Mituna), a controversial and prominent depiction of blindness, eye trauma, underage alcoholism, written depections of noncon facilitated by mind control (as an unsympathetic action), sexual assult (an unwanted kiss, as an unsympathetic action), jokes about pedophilia, and child grooming (textually 100% non-sexual, but sexually-coded).
Also: when I said the Trolls type weird, I wasn't kidding. Every character gets at least one color for their speech text, plus a pattern for how they type, generally worse for the Trolls, ranging from "no caps" to "British" to "drunk" to "ebonics" to "aLtErNaTiNg" to WH4T3V3R TH3 FUCK K1ND OF L33TSP34K BS T3R3Z1 1S DO1NG. So that's worth a warning.
And that's as abridged as you can get when summing up Homestuck.
25 notes · View notes
thatshirleylee · 6 months
Text
decide to show yall the video i made about ibises 4 years ago for homework
28 notes · View notes
z34l0t · 9 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
31 notes · View notes
midstpodcast · 30 days
Text
What are the Fold & The Un?
Let our magnificent Junior Lore Keeper Jared Deiro de-mystifiy the MIDST Cosmos with his latest deep dive! 🧡
87 notes · View notes
reasonsforhope · 1 year
Text
"After days of uncertainty and speculation, it’s actually happened: Former President Donald Trump has officially been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on charges of, reportedly, more than 30 counts related to business fraud.
The charges are still under seal, but they are expected to be related to Trump’s involvement in hush money payments made to porn performer Stormy Daniels and associated efforts to falsify business records. The indictment is a historic one, making Trump the only former president who’s ever been criminally charged.
The news begs a key question: What is an indictment, anyway?
Basically, it means a person is formally being charged with a felony by a grand jury. Charging someone in this manner is required in many felony cases, like the one involving Trump. As laid out by the New York State Constitution, Trump had to be indicted by a grand jury before prosecutors could proceed further. Now that he has been, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is able to coordinate [Trump's] surrender and pursue a trial.
“When a person is indicted, they are given formal notice that it is believed that they committed a crime,” notes the Department of Justice. “The indictment contains the basic information that informs the person of the charges against them.”
An indictment [note: pronounced in-die-t-ment] is a key step in criminal cases such as this one. First, a prosecutor decides to pursue a case against a person and presents witnesses and evidence in front of what’s known as a grand jury. The grand jury — a randomly selected group of 16 to 23 people — will weigh the information and then decide whether they believe there is probable cause that this person committed a crime and if there should be a trial...
If at least 12 jurors believe there is probable cause and vote to indict, then the person is officially charged and the case has the potential to go to trial. The grand jury does not determine if a person is guilty or not guilty like a trial jury does, however.
Understanding the Trump indictment
What is an indictment?
What happens next?
Can Trump still run for president?
What is the Republican response?
What will this mean for Trump’s 2024 campaign?
In Trump’s case, enough members of the Manhattan grand jury concluded that there is sufficient evidence to charge him with a crime. The indictment includes specific information about the charges and explains what laws the jurors believe Trump broke.
At this point, courts have not ruled on whether he is guilty or not; the grand jury has simply determined that he should be charged and that the case can go to trial. Following an indictment, a prosecutor can decide whether to pursue these charges or to drop them if there’s insufficient evidence. That the process appears to be going forward signals Bragg believes in the grand jury’s findings.
Trump’s next step is to surrender to law enforcement and have the charges read to him in court in what’s known as an arraignment. Trump is reportedly expected to turn himself in on Tuesday, when he’ll be taken into police custody and arrested, at which point his fingerprints and mugshot will also be taken.
He’ll then be arraigned later in the day, when he’ll be able to enter how he pleas in the case. After that, he’ll likely be able to leave without bail since the charges he faces are nonviolent felonies. [Note: apparently this is a recently implemented New York law, not just massive racism and classism in the legal system.]
The trial process for the case could ultimately be a drawn-out one since Trump is expected to contest the charges. If convicted, he could be sentenced to as much as four years in prison, the penalty for falsifying business records."
-via Vox, 3/31/23
36 notes · View notes
thepotentialof2007 · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
A logging company owner explains how to effectively disable heavy equipment about to be employed on a contested Timber Harvest Plan
28 notes · View notes
Text
What is solarpunk to you, anyway?
What do we mean when we talk about #solarpunk? This is a list of the #nonfiction #articles &etc informing our thinking + contextualize/feed into discussions on the #podcast.
Here’s a list of (very selected) non-fiction articles, posts, etc. that have informed our thinking on solarpunk and that contextualize and feed into the discussions that we have on the podcast: Places to start “Solarpunk: Notes toward a manifesto” by Adam Flynn (2014) SOLARPUNK: A REFERENCE GUIDE maintained by Jay Springett of solarpunks.net until early 2018. An excellent list of solarpunk…
Tumblr media
View On WordPress
19 notes · View notes
dddragoni-drabbles · 6 months
Text
I've been thinking a lot lately about the differences between writing and art as forms of creation and expression. (Yes, I know writing is a form of art, I'm using "art" here to mean drawings, don't get semantic on me.)
I've written a fair few things. Most of stuff ive posted publically is fanfiction for Blaseball, but I've got a couple original story drafts that have yet to see the light of day, as well as stuff I've written for dnd campaigns or dramatizations of games I've played. I've also doodled a few things, but I'm far more of a writer than I am an artist.
And what gets me about that is that art is able to be simple in a way that writing just... isn't. I'm not saying that as a way to put down art, to be clear. Doing art is hard work and takes a lot of practice, artists have earned their skill. What I mean is that while art can run the gamut from a doodle to a magnum opus, writing is locked to the top half of that scale. There's no written equivalent to a sketch or a portrait, something simple that is complete in and of itself. While art can tell a story, a written work, by its very nature, must include a story. And a story, by its very nature, must be dynamic.
There are a couple of things i feel like this impacts. First is the ability to create stuff for people. If I message a friend of mine and say "hey, I drew a picture of you," that's fun! It's cute! Totally normal thing to do. But if I tell someone "hey, I wrote something about you," that's a little weird. Because in writing, there must be a story, and in a story, there must be things happening. By writing an actual person into that story, I'm not just representing them, I'm ascribing thought and actions to them. Not a great thing to do to a real person. It leaves me feeling like I can't make things to show my friends how much I care about them without some convoluted workaround, like inputting us all into a simulator and narrating the result. I'm not making the decisions. I'm just the messenger.
The other thing that this affects is the ability to practice. Artists have sketchbooks, doodles, studies. References and techniques they can learn from. They can draw something over and over, refine their skill. There's no way to do this for writing. If you write out a story over and over, all you refine is your carpal tunnel. A story must have substance to it- not just to be good, but simply to exist.
So I'm going to try something. An experiment. I'm going to make a sideblog (the one that posted this,) and on that blog, I'm going to try and "sketch" stories. Little scenes, a few paragraphs long probably, without a greater context to them. No beginning, middle, and end. Different genres, different styles. Some original, some maybe fanfic-y. Some characters might show up again. I don't know. We're gonna see where this goes.
My goal is for this to be a daily thing, but I can't guarantee that because life happens.
6 notes · View notes