#i'm not but i do write a lot of papers on art history and analysis for school so you're not too far off!

[bixels]

If it's not too much trouble would you mind sharing more on your thoughts about AJ? Esp the line she shouted at Rarity and her "struggle with sexual identity" I'm kind of new so I would like to hear more! Does Rarity also struggle with sexual identity and fearing AJ would leave? I love the family oriented person A and the business inclined and impressed by shiny new things person B trope

Ok, this is gonna get into head canons and personal opinions.

The writing in Rollercoaster of Friendship (and EQG as a whole) is much simpler and more stripped down in comparison to FiM (most likely to appeal to a younger audience; don't want to seem like I'm dissing the writers), but that one confrontation made me sit up in my seat because it carries the entire special.

More under the cut cuz I don't want MLP analyses clogging up my blog.

For one, we've seen AJ get frustrated and angry about the same exact conflict over a girl in FiM (Rara), establishing a pattern. And even though she's right (her friend really is being manipulated), I read both cases as her acting out in jealousy too. Here's this girl who she's felt a unique attachment to being "taken away" and changed by someone new. This is most apparent in RoF; the moment Vignette introduces herself, kisses Rarity on both cheeks, and establishes herself as Rarity's "new best friend," AJ immediately reacts with shock, betrayal, and boldfaced jealousy (made even worse when Rarity forgets her during introductions). Although AJ acts independent, she's actually very emotionally dependent on certain people in her life.

If we come into this with the assumption that AJ has romantic feelings for Rarity –– which is a normal assumption given the director/writer confirmed the special was written as a romantic drama between the two –– AJ's line is all the more heartbreaking. If I may slip into fictional speculation: your crush is no longer listening or paying attention to you, even though you know something is wrong and that she's getting hurt. Your frustration at her lack of awareness is really your anger at her lack of care –– she doesn't care about you anymore. So in a fit of rage, in your big, dramatic confrontation, just to make her look at you, react at you, feel how she's been making you feel all day –– unwanted and unspecial –– you hurt her back. AJ yells, "You're not special!" and Rarity cries.

And what really gets me is that AJ lies. In this moment, she lies that Rarity's not special when (again, assumption of romance) she's the most special person in the world to her. So special that she's placed all her feelings of self-assurance and security on their relationship. So special that the moment their relationship is shaken and she doesn't know to recover it –– recover herself –– she lashes out, acts against her character, and says something dishonest just to hurt the girl she loves.

(Honestly, rewatching this special, AJ is so insecure and attention-needy. The way she pouts and slouches and lags behind the group and says, "Never mind. It's nothing," when asked what's wrong is textbook "please pay attention to me and ask me what's wrong because i need a reason to be honest about feelings i know i should be ashamed of" behavior.)

I think AJ's insecurities (which could be tied to her lack of experience with romantic relationships) reveal how she has a tendency to misattribute and redirect anger onto the person she cares most about (see Simple Ways as well, where she's caught on the opposite end of a jealousy spat). This could easily become a very toxic trait, but AJ grows past it. Near the end of RoF, the two come together and apologize. AJ recognizes her entitlement and confesses her insecurities about their relationship. She felt hurt and attacked when her status as Rarity's best friend/girlfriend was threatened because it's a role she uses to self-identify –– if Rarity isn't hers, she loses part of her identity. And she admits that she thought her motivation was to protect Rarity, but really she was just being selfish and protecting herself. Rarity was busy and stressed and needed someone to lean on just as much AJ needed her. She isn't AJ's emotional support girlfriend, and it wasn't right to expect her to be one.

(Which is why Rarijack is peak because throughout both series, they repeatedly show just how important honesty, open communication, and trust is in maintaining, supporting, and growing a romantic relationship.)

#i got a tag on my post yesterday speculating that i'm an english major #i'm not but i do write a lot of papers on art history and analysis for school so you're not too far off! #i just finished a short 6-pager analyzing a single page from a 1940 superman comic #ask me #anon #not including analysis on rarity cuz this post is way too long. another time.

[technicallyverycowboy]

playboyy: no fags, no femmes

okay, so. playboyy meta. thanks to @lugarn, @chaos0pikachu, and @cryptidafter for talking all this out with me <3

i originally started this post with "not to be that guy," but honestly, i do want to be that guy. because so much of the critique and analysis of playboyy i'm seeing is a) grounded in a lack of knowledge about queer history and aesthetics and b) veers unintentionally but wildly into unexamined homophobia.

so, given i'm going to reference susan sontag's notes on camp several times, i've decided i might as well go full queer studies major about it and copy the list style she uses. (i would highly recommend reading notes on camp. it is academic and somewhat dense, but it's a tame 13 pages)

1. so many people are confidently asserting that playboyy is not camp, regardless of what the creatives behind the show think. to which i have to ask: how are you defining camp? what things are campy to y'all?

2. the personal definition of camp that i arrived at after writing a bunch of papers about it is two-fold: camp is exaggeration, treating things that are serious casually and treating things that are casual seriously. camp is about an aesthetic of inhabiting a role, where something is a little bit off or being something that it's not meant to be.

and to be clear, this is a wildly incomplete and simplified definition, because one of the points of camp is that it's a vibe, not something concrete. It’s also something that shifts over time the relationship between queerness and society changes.

2a. camp often intersects and overlaps with surrealism, like in rocky horror picture show. very often media that is campy exits the mundane world and enters a heightened world of exaggeration and stylization. 

3. so, is playboyy campy? i sure as hell think it is. i think lugarn and chaos0pikachu both made really good points about the campiness of playboyy and it being specifically sexwork camp. (both replies are at that link.)

4. a brief list of things that specifically resonated as campy to me: first throwing american dollars in the pool for soong to catch, zouey's fantasy of feeling up teena in art class, every single element of nant's room (especially the projected images), captain's sports plot that involved zero doing the sport and 100% fucking and fantasy, the softly romantic framing of nuth and phob's sex scenes, jump's pleather tank top & coverall combination, prom wearing assless chaps to a rooftop party at 2:30 in the afternoon, the entire concept of investigating a disappearance via a themed party... i could go on and on, but i said this was brief.

5. i think the actual problem a lot of people have with playboyy is that it doesn't care about straight people.

6. what i mean by that is that playboyy is not a universal story. you could not plug different characters with different sexualities into the plot and preserve the essence of the story. the gayness of the characters is integral to the plot. the sex work is integral to the plot. this is not a world where homophobia doesn't exist and being gay is just like being straight.

7. additionally, these characters are all performing gender in a specifically queer way. they are femmes and fags, they are obvious, they are clockable, they're visible. when nice gays talk about the people who are giving gays a bad reputation and making it harder for everyone (to assimilate into heteropatriarchy) they're talking about playboyy gays.

8. comparing playboyy to only friends is low hanging fruit at this point, but i would argue that the reason boston stood out in that cast and was so viciously punished by the ending is because he was a fag stuck in a nice gays narrative.

9. and this is where the fandom homophobia comes in. so, so many people describe these characters and chaotic and messy, watchable as incoherent and vaguely amusing from a distance, but without real substance. the resulting narrative is often that no one could take their characters or their stories seriously or resonate with them.

10. again, why? why was ray and sand's high and low, blow up fights, calling each other whores relatable but soong and first's miscommunications about what they mean to each other unbelievable chaos? why is white taking black's place an acceptable plot point, but nont pretending to be nant is absurd?

11. most bls do not deal with flamboyance except in limited capacities by comedic side characters. flamboyance is a baseline trait for most of the playboyy characters. so if they feel too much, too loud, too out there, consider asking yourself why they do.

12. to a large extent, i think a lot of the criticism of playboyy is rooted in a bad faith refusal to engage with the show beyond a surface level pearl clutching about the sexual content. the unspoken belief here being that sex scenes are inherently vulgar distractions. they can't be integral to characters or their relationships. they can't be vital pieces of a narrative.

to which i say, there are nine thousand other BLs out there where the kissing is chaste and sex scenes are ~tastefully abstracted shots of shoulder blades and hands. watch those instead.

13. if you decide you want to watch it anyway, take a couple minutes to examine what parts of the show make you uncomfortable and why. and to be clear, i think there’s a lot of value in watching things that make you uncomfortable; media is often one of the best ways to dip into interrogating your emotional responses from a safe distance. 

but don’t use discomfort to dismiss the possibility that there’s meaningful artistic and stylistic choices made to serve a meaningful narrative. take a second to sit with your reactions and ask yourself where it’s coming from. 

#playboyy #playboyy meta #i want you all to know i hunted through three emails to find the rhetoric of camp essay i wrote in college for this

[changelingsandothernonsense]

Hi it's me, friend! <3

Excuse me marching in here unannounced. I decided to send some asks, and well, I thought that perhaps you might also like these questions. (Feel free to answer in your own time or ignore as your spoons allow. <3)

I know we love to talk about breaking the rules in writing and obviously, that not every piece of advice is one-size-fits all, but there is a lot to say about being able to speak with each other about what we have learned during our journey. I was wondering if you wouldn't share. (I also plan on poking some of the others to see what more we can shake out. The more the merrier, no?)

What is the most useful/helpful pieces of advice you ever received during your formal education in relation to writing?

Once you started to write, what was the most important thing that you learned about writing or its process?

Has your real life/job had any influence on your writing? If so, how?

What advice would you give to aspiring writers (be it fanfiction or original)?

Hi Winter <3 Finally getting around to asks again :3

What is the most useful/helpful pieces of advice you ever received during your formal education in relation to writing?

I'm not formally educated in creative writing but I do write a lot of academic papers. As far as that's concerned the one thing we've been told is. "Describe the topic to me like I'm 5 and have never seen this object before."

Hey, it works! I use it for descriptions <3 2. Once you started to write, what was the most important thing that you learned about writing or its process? I'm still learning my process, really only started writing in March but I know if I'm not feeling words, I don't write. I can't make anything happen when I have transient aphasia either so maybe the most important thing is- Write when I feel the spark. Be kind to myself whilst I do it and don't worry about word count.

3. Has your real life/job had any influence on your writing? If so, how? I put a lot of personal experience into my writing (even the highly horrific stuff comes from reality for me). I have had a very wide range of experiences and a lot of those do come from my work in Archaeology. So I really love to get into interpreting the landscape in TES through that lens. I specialise in the Bronze Age Near East and Central Asia and I write a heck of a lot of Dunmer-related content (me just novelising Morrowind atm alongside the main fic which is connected directly). I use my knowledge in that to influence my characterisation of Dunmeri culture and history. I base my characterisation of Nerevar, for example on a few major historical warlords and will be doing the same for the Nerevarine. Plus I love being able to describe tombs, mummification and ruins using the background knowledge I've acquired over the last decade. Oh and I have a lot to say about Vivec! As well as the overall nature of the Tribunal, the aftermath of their fall, and how people would rebuild after the events of Tes III, IV and the Red Year. @mareenavee has been kind enough to listen to me ramble about it. I know most people don't have the patience for my opinions and analysis so it's appreciated <3 4. What advice would you give to aspiring writers (be it fanfiction or original)? Just do it! Seriously! Just write as the urge strikes you, it doesn't have to be good, that comes with time and practice. I view my writing journey the same way I view my art. It's all in practice and repetition. Oh and a lot of stubbornness! Just write!

#asks #writing process #archaeology is everything to me

[finniestoncrane]

Last one, I promise!

Number 9.

So, I think of myself as a very creative person. I like writing a lot, I make jewelry, baking and I just like making things. I'm also handy with power tools because of various projects. I am also a big fan of solving puzzles and trying to figure out how things work. I'm an up and coming archeologist, and historical/cultural scholar, particularly in relation to how the concepts of magic and mythology shape world cultures and their interactions and developments. I actually plan on teaching a class on that one day.

I tend to collect odd bits (mostly containers for some reason) for projects, and always have pen and paper one hand for when inspiration strikes. When I'm not doing crafty things, I'm listening to music and generally just vibing.

Another thing is that I'm half organized. Certain things are super meticulous (my closet for example. I can tell you where everything is down to the hanger position. I'm the same way with my books.) and other things (mainly surfaces) are in complete disarray. What is organized is generally color coded, and I'm generally color coordinated.

I sometimes like to say I'm the dumbest smart person in the room sometimes, because I can break down complicated things, and have long discussions about various, often college level topics, and two seconds later, ask a very obvious question that should be common sense.

I read a lot, and will often make commentary as I'm reading. It's a whole experience.

I'm the kind of person who enjoys going to art galleries, museums, and aquariums, and just getting to learn new things.

Also, I'm a sucker for coffee dates with long discussions and then hitting the bookstore afterwards.

Probably a lot more information than you needed, but better to give more to provide better material for analysis, than to provide very little, and get something generic. Not that I think you would, I'm just saying that in general.

🎀 No.9: Ever Fallen In Love With Someone 🎀

tell me a little bit about yourself and i'll give you a rogue pairing a/n: flashbacks to me giggling like a little idiot the whole way through the arkham games because ozzie but also, museum dates with ozzie ;-; 1k milestone info! 🔞minors dni🔞 • kofi • tag: finnie1k

ok so the first thing that got me was the creativity. i think ozzie is in desperate need of someone to let him indulge in his softer, creative side as an outlet for his feelings, and i think he is secretly very creative, i mean his displays in his museum are so well-designed?

speaking of the museum, boy loves history and culture, i mean he can say that he wanted to display the bodies of his enemies all he wants, but he kept the dinosaur bones and artifacts, he's a little history geek, so having a partner who could run the museum with him and was also clued up on stuff like that would be perfection! and he'd absolutely love calling you "professor" as a little petname

yeah he's a collector too (odd things, maybe not the same as your odd things but... definitely odd...)

ok uhuh, look no judgements here, i am also fuckin dreadfully unorganised in some things and hyper-organised in others. so is oswald. crimes and things? planned perfectly? his museum displays? lovely! his office? looks like a fuckin nightmare like jeez buddy, but the colour coding? the man wears purple everything so he can mix and match key wardrobe pieces, which is just SMART

i think oswald would appreciate your intelligence so much, but there would be something undeniably cute about you being a bit silly, it would give him an opportunity to pretend he was the smart one sometimes

sit next to him in his office and read to him, that would be so soothing, like having some ambient background noise that he actually loves

he's maybe not a book shop kinda guy but for you, he'd do anything to make you feel spoiled!

#finnie1k #finnie writes

[annes-room]

💻 Jan 9, 2024

introductory days for the semester are now over, the next classes will be all about actual material now! just wanted to write a little first impressions for my classes and what I'm looking forward to in them :)

stats: my prof seems super fun and cheery, he told us a bit about his education and teaching background and he has such a variety of experiences and I always think that makes for a better prof, so I'm excited to learn from him! the material itself seems chill, I did really well in my stats course last semester, so I'm eager to build on what I've learned

film studies: we're going to be looking at film as history, as a way to explain and interpret time periods and the culture/events surrounding film eras. I've never delved in to that area of analysis before, but I think it'll be really cool. our big assignment is to write a research paper about any topic relating to an era we're studying, and having just finished my english course where we had to do the same thing but with books, I think I'll be well equipped for it. I've also taken a previous film class with the same prof and I liked him, so that always helps too.

compsci (programming methods): technically I haven't actually gotten into the course yet, I'm on the waitlist, but I will sit in on the lectures until I actually get in (or until the deadline to sign up passes). it has a 25% fail rate, which seems scary, but I think it's mainly because you go from using Python and being hand-held by the profs, to having to learn C, which is more user reliant and involved. the prof seems super chill and eager to help students and there are a lot of help sessions for labs, so I think as long as I keep up and get help where I need it, I should be fine.

women and gender studies (consent): this is my other arts option that I'll stay in if I can't get into the first compsci class. the prof is open and friendly and gave the outline for the readings this semester and there's a huge variety of topics within consent that I hadn't considered, there are a lot of heavy ones for sure, but they're all important and I won't be upset if I have to stay in this class.

compsci (ethics in data and ai): I'm so pumped for this class! this is only the third time it's been taught, so it's pretty new and I'm really interested in the topic of the course, especially as ethics surrounding data and ai has become way more prevalent during my time at university.

#annes room #my desk #my journal #university #university life #studying #new semester #studyblr #stemblr #stats #compsci

[transsexualhamlet]

Hi :)) for the fics ask - 💌📡🍭🎈🎀🍉🦋

OMG THATS SO MANY???? i love you anon

ask game

putting a readmore because um. so many questions

💌share something with us about an up-and-coming work (WIP) that has you excited!

SHAKES AND WHIMPERS finally someone asks me about my wips............. oh dear oh dear oh dear. Trembling wet and pathetic awkwardly holds out 25 pages of handwritten Mairon apologism covered in blood sweat tears . This is one of those ones that I'm terrified I'm going to be dogpiled over in the fandom because. Silmarillion fandom. Intimidating. This is the first time I've read the book and these bitches are veritable scholars in Arda history and languages. Like they have damn phds. doctarates. I'm just like hi I think he did nothing wrong ever except for all the atrocities and the atrocities were fine because it's international womens day and hes like a woman to me.

Anyway I should. Actually explain them i just I have two things going on one of them is just. Six pages of independent ramblings written all at once fueled by "I just woke up with the sickest ass line of dialogue ever conceived and I need to bring it to justice Right Fucking Now" and the other is what will probably end up being a chapter fic with six or seven chapters though I haven't. Decided what point I'll end it at. I'm two chapters deep and I have tons of motivation rn so hopefully. Things will continue that way because god have I been known to abandon works of that length. (looks at the bond fic) (looks at osamu dazai is dead) (looks a-)

The first mentioned one is well. I think it's just such a funny quirky girl trait of his to have not only founded a human sacrifice death cult but to have gotten it sugar daddy funded by batting his eyelashes at the king of Numenor it's just. Truly wonderful situation and I feel it is not spoken of nearly enough. The basic concept of that snippet is "pov ur defeated enemy/prisoner/mistress/royal advisor's bedroom talk involves apocalyptic sermons dooming you to eternal suffering if you don't worship his dead ex".

The other one is pretty self explanatory and has probably been done a million times, just my take on the untold hashtag "Seduction of Sauron". Basically several chapters of Melkor convincing Mairon to seize the means of production this one is very well. It's not very favorable to the methods and ideas of Eru it is decidedly anti-Eru

📡why is writing and sharing your writing important for fandom?

I mean that's like, half of what fandom is. It's sharing words (both fanfic and headcanons/shitposts/analysis/incorrect quotes etc) and images (art/memes/edits/screencaps etc). We wouldn't really fandom without it.

🍭why did you start writing?

It's really just how my brain works? I can communicate so much better written than out loud. I've literally been writing since before I can remember. Both my parents are writers and my parents tell me I narrated stories out loud to myself at night before I knew how to write on paper. I just. I really liked saying things and telling stories and once I started I pretty much never stopped though of course the writing I did as a first grader was not the same kind that I do now.

🎈describe your style as a writer; is it fixed? does it change?

I mean, as a fanfic writer I always try to make my writing fit the mood of its source material, so there is definitely a lot of variation between say, my lotr fics and my owari no seraph fics. But I know that I do have many qualities of my writing that are recognizable throughout pretty much everything I do. I have a rather pretentious style, and I focus significantly on body language, exaggerated emotion, flowery metaphors, and internal dialogue. But my humorous work does sound pretty different, though I mostly don't do that unless it's for a general audience who I feel insecure being flowery and sincere around.

🎀give yourself a compliment about your own writing

Aww, ok. I mean I think the best thing about my writing is that it fits my personal tastes perfectly. I write 99 percent for myself and the other 1 percent for the six people on the internet who will froth at the mouth over it. I write mostly to articulate and cement my Strong Feelings About Concepts And Ideas and writing them helps me literally understand how I feel about things and what it really is I'm trying to get at. It's an added bonus that other people also like it :)

🍉in what ways has writing helped you process trauma and/or navigate through your own life?

I can't really say I'm a super trauma-ridden individual, though I guess I've had my moments. Mainly writing does for me what I said above. I turn to it to have peace of mind and delve into the concepts that thrill and move me. When I feel overwhelmed and empty and unsatisfied and confused I know it's because I haven't written recently. Maybe thats the autism

🦋what are you most insecure about when you post a fic?

There's always just the general anxiety that it will be seen by the general fandom as uncalled for and cringe. I'm always worried I will be seen as a Fake Intellectual for my pretentious style and often limited knowledge on the source material and I'm worried especially when I enter a new fandom that I'll just be completely off and get 80 billion things wrong. The more I interact with, know about and post for a fandom, the less anxious I get because it's been established people like it and aren't gonna kill me.

#rowan gets yelled at #anon #ask game #yeah i really went off on this one lmao

[marshmallowprotection]

Hello! I hope you're doing well. I would like to have a mystic messenger matchup please! :)). I just got back into it omg and i feel relieved and pleasantly surprised there's still people talking about this omg tysm!!

I'm a heterosexual girl and at first glance, I'm extremely shy and quiet. I'm very well mannered and polite but that's only because I don't know you that well yet and I feel hesitant to open up due to extreme trust issues. I feel like I'm really intimidating since I don't smile a lot because of this and my friends often agree with that. Once I feel comfortable with you though, it's an entirely different story 😂

I become much more warm-hearted, dorky, bubbly, and animated-like. Tons of people have commented that I'm empathetic (one of my friends told me I should be a therapist because of this), understanding, authentic, genuine, appreciative, nonjudgmental, open-minded, trustworthy, great with advice and comfort, soft hearted, compassionate, gentle, child-like, independent (to a fault), and “looks like they could kill you but actually wouldn't hurt a fly because they're the cinnamon roll of the group".

Also, I can get a bit silly and teasing from time to time with my friends, but that's only in private or when I'm with them. I'm usually calm and laid-back and to quote some people here: "you just have the vibe where people are just comfortable to be who they are with you because you really don't mind their flaws" and "she really, really, has a strong moral compass among all of us here".

I can also work well under pressure, I tend to give my best when it comes to the things I enjoy, and can surprisingly handle attention very well (Even though I despise it with my entire being because I feel so uncomfortable with it and I feel kinda drained afterwards).

And just for fun to say here, I can be really oblivious when someone has romantic intentions with me, so I'd appreciate it if someone would just spell it out for me because once I do realize it, I would either just say yes or no to them, so I can be straightforward when I need to be.

For my hobbies and interests, I love to write. I really love to write and I can't explain it just a few sentences alone. From academic papers for school, journalistic articles for the student newspaper, or to just personal stories from my own imagination, I'm just really passionate about it.

That being said, I also love to read! I don't really mind which genre it is, just give me a good plot and I'm hooked!

Aside from that, I enjoy discussing philosophy, politics, films (for example, a certain plot point or a plot hole, the cinematography, the dialogue, etc.), Music (analysis of the lyrics, progression of the notes, etc.), History, culture, shows (doesn't matter what country it's from, just please give me a good plot 😂), fashion (its history, references that I could catch on to, the structure, and my own personal taste on it if I would like to wear it myself), psychology, languages (I speak 3-4 languages and often switch whenever I'm speaking to friends and relatives. But I also can point out the quirks and give an in-depth look into it if the person is interested in what we're talking about), debate, research, art (its history, the meaning, I could just go on since I love it so much and also bc I'm not that great of an artist to begin with 😂 but i do paint from time to time).

I love listening to classical music since that's the genre of music I grew up with, but I also old vintage music from the past too! And from time to time, I also like listening to Broadway, other songs from different countries, and I have a soft spot for Disney songs too! Speaking of which, my friends say I'm like a mix of Belle, Rapunzel, and Anna when it comes to the princesses and I agree 😂.

Also, I love my friends and believe that family are the people you choose to be with and you can't live without. So, all in all, I love my family (sksks but truthfully, my heart is big to hold a lot of people in it). I would do anything for them because they're the people I would do anything to protect and lend a helping hand no matter what the hour. So, I'm really supporting and a big cheerleader to those I'm close with 😂

Lastly, my love language is quality time and words of reassurance! If it helps, I'm also an INFJ and my Hogwarts house is Ravenclaw.

Phew, that was a lot to say and I'm really sorry if it's a lot. I really appreciate this and thank you so much in advance! Hope you have a good day and night! :))! 🌸✨

I match you with...

Jumin!

You're a kind of person who truly values conversation and rational debate. When you're talking to other people, whatever comes to mind isn't just what you talk about. You spend a lot of time trying to cultivate and think about the best way to discuss the subject that you're talking about. Conversation is the most important thing to you. You need a partner that values the same thing that you do when it comes down to it. That's why the perfect match for somebody like you would be Jumin. His favorite love language is actually communication.

He could spend hours talking about this or that and not realize how late it would get. It’s so easy to lose track of time when you’re with someone you love. He has the tendency to get carried away when it's something that he's passionate about, so it's not that hard to imagine the two of you curled up together talking about everything and anything. It may seem like the rest of the world doesn't know how to Value the two things that you both enjoy the most; but, what matters is that you have someone in your life that gets it. That knows what it feels like to want somebody around who listens.

Curl up on the couch and enjoy a foreign film together while you discuss this and that. You get swept away so easily that the only thing that might pull you from the discussion is the sounds of Elizabeth’s “meerp!” for attention.

#mod kait #ask #matchup #amoongazer

[umichenginabroad]

Week 4: Lekker, Hè?! (Tasty, Huh?!)

Ahoj všichni!

It’s been a busy week, and an even busier start to the new week, so I apologize for the later post. Welcome back to my life in Praha, this blog focuses mainly on my assignments and weekend trip to Amsterdam! As usual, feel free to skip to sections that are interesting or resonate with you.

Side note: “Lekker, Hè?!” is Dutch for “Tasty, Huh?!” which is in reference to the beer at the Heineken museum (see the pictures in the Amsterdam section).  I got excited to see the word “lekker” after living in South Africa for 6 weeks this past summer. It translates to “good” in Afrikaans (and apparently Dutch too!). “Lekker” was the first word I learned in South Africa, and is one of the most commonly used words throughout the Cape! 

Farmers rolling up in style

According to Rueters, “hundreds of Czech farmers drove their tractors into downtown Prague on Monday, disrupting traffic outside the Agriculture Ministry.” Those that live in the Sokolská apartments woke up to tractor horns blaring. They witnessed the Prague farmer protests against low prices, high energy costs, cheap imports, and EU climate change constraints. Because of blocked roads and other potential struggles for students trying to get to class, school was hybrid on Monday. It was nice to be able to do my first class from home after the long weekend in Paris, but I honestly wasn’t super affected by the protests.

Read, Write, Repeat

Well it’s week 4 so the assignments are piling up. For a CS program, we sure do a lot of reading and writing, two of my least favorite things… (besides when it comes to the blog, I love all you readers!)

For tech ethics, we have had to read and analyze 3 lengthy papers each week discussing philosophical topics in technology and ethics. We go over the important information in class, but are expected to know key points and vocabulary, and must take a written/multiple choice quiz prior to arriving. For my communications class, we just had to complete an annotated bibliography, in which I analyzed, summarized, and reflected on two articles pertaining to recent developments in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Analyzing the articles in my communications class was supposed to help jumpstart research for our Leadership Development challenge project on SEO.

It also feels like we’ve been doing presentations non-stop. In Leadership and Communications, it’s very common for us to get split up into groups, then research and present an assigned topic to the class. Similarly, in Databases, we get time to work on a database design or to learn a new concept (like normalization or regularization), and then present our findings to the class. I’m definitely getting better at communicating on the spot, but this teaching style is becoming quite repetitive. However, I do have some presentations I'm looking forward to in the upcoming weeks: Essential Czech (on a prominent Czech figure), Architecture (on a European site I’ve visited), and Tech Ethics (performing a technology risk analysis).

Staré Město Tour - A Recap (Old Town Square)

This week’s Architecture class tour was in Staré Město. Because of its proximity to the Old Town Square, our lecture was held in an NYU Prague campus building. A couple NYU students sat in to learn about the history of religious conflict in the region, and how it shapes Prague’s secular society today. We started off learning about European Christianization. In this period, churches were built in high gothic style, characterized by tall spires that point to heaven. They would be considered the skyscrapers of medieval Prague, demonstrating the prominence of the Church and religion in high middle age society. The central structure below, St. Nicholas Church, served as the city’s church and monestary for the elite.

St. Nicholas was originally gothic, but was rebuilt in baroque style. Baroque was developed by the Catholics as a new cultural aspect of the Catholic Church to spread art, classical music, and more. The Protestants responded by developing their own baroque art and architecture, which spurred competition between the two Christian groups to expressively spread their creations. Prague begun to be redesigned in baroque style, characterized by high ceilings and open skies, allowing for communication with saints in heaven. Whereas gothic style focused on God, baroque focused on representing the Church as a community.

We then visited the Jan Hus memorial. Built in the early 20th century by Czech nationalists, this memorial offers a modern (re)interpretation of Jan Hus, a national Czech hero. He is depicted as a religious leader and reformer, with Hussite followers to his right. Jan Hus was sentenced to death and burnt at stake, but the Hussite group later developed into Protestant (or Bohemian) Reformation, which was an effort by Catholic clergy to reform the abuses and corruption of the medieval Church, which abused organized religion to obtain power. 

The Column of our Lady, dedicated to Mary, the mother of Jesus, stands tall beside the Jan Hus memorial. It was built after the 30 Year’s War by Emperor Ferdinand III Habsburg, as an act of thanks to God for saving Prague from the Swedish Protestant invasion in 1648. Many see the column as a symbol of Habsburg dominance and victory over Protestant minorities. However, it needed to be rebuilt after getting destroyed by Czech nationalists in 1918 when the Habsburg state collapsed. The Column is pictured below, in front of the gothic Church of Our Lady before Týn.

Finally, we saw a fragment of original medieval City Hall, pictured below. A political building representing local authority, peppered with religious symbols like apses. It even contained a Chapel inside. This is a mighty representation of how engrained religion was into politics and society in Bohemia.

Amsterdam

On Friday, I traveled to Amsterdam for my friend Samantha’s birthday! I’ve known her since we were young, but we got lucky and ended up at Michigan together. In Amsterdam, we met up with a group of 10 of her school friends who are some of my favorite people at Michigan, but I hadn’t seen them in a while, so I was excited to spend the weekend with them. 

Prior to my flight, we had a mandatory guest speaker, Petr Vaclavek, from the New Venture industry. He is a venture builder, serial startup founder, and creative innovation leader, so it was interesting to learn about his journey in the start-up sector. I was expecting the talk to be more interactive, but it was more of a lecture on the current new ventures environment in Europe. I left IFSA immediately after the speaker for the airport. I flew EasyJet, and was a bit nervous about the dimensions of my bag since they were slightly over the permitted size. Of course they stopped me to check if it fit in the holder, which it didn’t, but it came close enough that they let me through without charging me to put it in the overhead compartment. Funny enough, it actually ended up fitting perfectly under the seat in front of me with dims 45cm x 35cm x 25cm.

When I got to Amsterdam, I tried to buy a transportation pass and shortly after, I hopped on a bus. Unfortunately, although the transaction went through, the pass never loaded in my email. I panicked when I saw people scanning their passes to get off the bus, and literally bolted off the bus at a random stop. I was so nervous I would get fined, but fortunately I did not get caught. I walked the rest of the way (30 mins) to the hostel to put my stuff away before meeting everyone. When I finally arrived at the group, I realized that I wasn’t in the group chat this entire time because my American phone number was added instead of my Travel number. To be honest, I simply thought Samantha was communicating the plan individually to everyone. It doesn’t make any sense to do that, but I didn't ask any questions because it was her birthday plans after all. She thought I wasn’t responding to any of the texts in the groupchat this whole time, but was like that makes soooo much more sense lol. oops!

Because we all met up on the Friday, our agenda was light and we spent most of the day walking around and peaking into thrift stores and local shops with yummy samples. Friday evening, we went to the Anne Frank House, which is now a museum. Though the house was emptied by German troops after the raid, Miep Gies was able to salvage Anne’s diary. Gies later gave it to Otto Frank, the only holocaust survivor of the Frank family, who devoted himself to editing and getting the diary published. The museum recreates the atmosphere and period of their hiding, but Otto Frank refused to refurnish the secret annex. Thus, some documents and possessions belonging to the eight people who hid there are displayed instead. The museum tour was a self-paced audioguide, which I appreciated because it was incredibly emotional and I felt like going through it by myself. I highly recommend this experience if you ever travel to Amsterdam. 

On Saturday, we booked a canal cruise with unlimited wine and beer!  We met some girls on our boat and ended up having some mutual friends which was a fun coincidence. It started to rain, but after a couple of drinks, no one seemed to care. The canals were beautiful and it was fun being on the water. Thankfully no one got sick on the boat…

After the cruise, we headed over to the Heineken Museum. The Heineken Experience Tour was supposed to take 2-3 hours, but we sped through it. One of the workers loved our group, so he gave us free rooftop admission and even more free drinks to top off our two complementary glasses of beer! I actually ended up liking the beer, which is extremely out of character, but I was still unable to finish a glass by myself. 

No better way to end a morning bender than with French Fries, so we headed over to the highly recommended Fabel Friets! They 100% hit the spot. Afterwards, we headed back to the hostel to freshen up and get ready for the night. 

What shocked me the most about Amsterdam was that people were smoking or using substances everywhere, even right in front of cops! I looked it up out of curiosity, and according to CNN, “cannabis and some types of recreational mushrooms are [illegal], but largely tolerated.” This is not the case in Prague or the US!

We packed up our things super quickly Sunday morning since checkout was at 10am, and then headed over to The Pancake Bakery for brunch! Fortunately, our hostel had free storage lockers so we didn’t have to lug our stuff everywhere. The food was incredible! We had an insane spread with omelettes, savory and sweet crepe-like pancakes, and poffertjes - mini Dutch pancakes! Finally, Amsterdam wouldn’t be complete without stopping in a candy shop, so we picked out some candy for flight back and headed to the airport. Samantha flew back to Prague with me since it’s her spring break, and we met up with some other Michigan guys at the airport who were also flying to Prague. It’s always nice having travel buddies, they keep me entertained and on time :)

As per usual, here are some ins (things that are working) and outs (things that have been giving me trouble) for this week.

Ins:

StayOkay Hostel: This hostel was a really nice stay and was able to accommodate all 10 of us in Amsterdam. It had free WiFi, a cheap café, and was located in the center of a beautiful park! Overall highly recommend, but be sure to pack a towel if you want to take a shower!

Sewing Kit: Before leaving, I bought a sewing kit for $7 at Target. It has already come in handy for patching up a pair of jeans and one of my favorite shirts. I'll throw in bonus points for it coming with a measuring tape, which has been helpful with suitcase dimensions.

Dogs: Everyone who visits Prague absolutely LOVES the dogs roaming around everywhere without leashes! I love this for Prague :)

Outs:

O2 data: Soooo my 10GB data plan ran out, but instead of O2 letting me top-up my plan, I had to wait until the 30 day period was over to buy more. Now it’s only letting my buy data on a day-to-day basis… tragic. Will hopefully have better updates on my data plan next week.

Straightening my hair: It’s been nearly a month, and I still have yet to invest in a blow dry brush or hair straightener (shout out Lydia for letting me borrow hers). My hair is very naturally curly, so I’ve been styling it with water and my dae curl cream nearly every day. All you readers with curly hair know that maintaining nice curls is time consuming, but the beauty is worth it!

That’s all for now, I’ll see you next week! 

Na schle všichni,

Reese Liebman

Computer Science and Engineering

Institute for Study Abroad (IFSA) CS Tech Career Accelerator in Prague, Czechia

#UmichEnginAbroad #IPEcsPrague #ReeseLiebman #IPEWinter24 #CzechRepublic

[daveinediting]

The Thing About Books (Part 1)

If I was an editor just getting started out today, I'm not sure this would be true.

Why?

Because I grew up during a time when actual, physical books, books you held in your hands, books with book covers front and back... were how we read. That's generally the only way we read and I was a reader. I got the bug. From my grade school days, in fact, ordering from Scholastic Books. Every month in class our teacher would pass out a paper catalog that we'd take home to choose books with our parents who would send us back to school with a completed order form and some money. 

I still have a coupla those books, by the way. One or two I intentionally kept over the years.

As an editor, then, who got his start in those days, as I embarked on my career and as I continued through that career to this day, I collected a lot of books. Some of them were random, chosen according to my particular personal interests at the time. And I would read those right away. I would. The majority of my books, though, were reference books.

Reference books?

Sure, yeah. Books that helped me do what I do. Books in which I could look up how to better do what I do. Books that gave me a bigger picture, context, history, of what it is I do.

Since my career started on the production side, I have a section, albeit an old one, of books about production, from the tech at the time through directing. 

Of course the oldest section I have is the one that includes books from my childhood through high school. Stephen King. Frank Herbert. Tom Clancy. Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child.

When Kimmer 'n I got married we crafted a lot of things from and on paper. Some of it was art. Some of it was graphic design created through Microsoft Publisher. So there's an old section of books about art and craft and graphic design as well.

When it became clear my professional path was post-production, I started collecting books about editing. Sometimes the books were about the craft. Sometimes the process. Sometimes about the specific software. And then as my career expanded to include work as a music composer, up sprang a section of books encompassing instruments, music analysis, soundtracks, specific software, songwriting, arranging, recording, and mixing. Books about the craft. Books about the tech. About the techniques. About the underlying theory.

It's a lot of books, as it turns out. With smaller sections on faith, science, politics, marketing, biographies, psychology, neuroscience, sociology, creativity, rock bands, Monty Python, and Malcolm Gladwell.

The biggest section, though, is writing. Screenwriting. Playwriting. Books on the psychology of character. Books about plot. Books about the act of writing. A grammar book or two (my favorite: "The Transitive Vampire" by Karen Elizabeth Gordon). Some books on different, specific genres of writing. Some books I use for research on a play I'm writing. Some screenplays for analysis. And so on.

By the way, the reason I bring this up right now is that when we moved from the apartment to the house, we moved, of course, from a smaller space to a bigger one. Therefore there were more options on what to do with all my books, where to put them and, for the first time, why I would put them here... and not there. There... but not somewhere else.

The big plot twist about our move, though, is that this time around I have a contained office, not an "office" that's basically the corner space between the kitchen and the living room. This time, I have a room of my own. An edit suite as opposed to the desk on which my workstation rests.

I'm gonna stop right here, though. When I pick this up again tomorrow, I'll tell you what all those books, both professional and personal, have to do with my creativity.

🙂

#books #ideas #inspiration #knowledge #answers #creativity #creative process #creative vibe #creative space

[uozlulu]

Man how do you find the time to do all this? Photography, writing, liveblogs?? I'm lucky if I find an hour during lunch break at work to work on a WIP. Usually I have to set aside time on Saturdays. And that's not a guarantee.

Sorry, this got long I just kind of started rambling more than I probably should have. 

Part unemployment, part having zero friends in my area, part living in the woods literally, part multi-tasking skills built from university where I did a double major in Creative Writing and History for my BA. Like I can eat, watch TV, analyze what I’m watching on TV because my brain just does writing analysis by nature, and write fanfic or process photos all at the same time because I had to write a five page paper weekly or bi-weekly for most of my 400-level courses. 

When I was going to school full time (12 hours in a classroom, 36 hours studying) a lot of the time it was just devoting my free time to multiple layers of things. Another factor is before I went to university and developed a headache that never goes away I could upkeep 30~ fanfics simultaneously and finish all of them. I had probably about 150+ fanfics on ff.net I’d written between 2001 and 2004 before starting to Purdue in the fall of 2004. It’s why I decided to go into writing-intensive majors. I just didn’t expect my brain to change as much as it has over the last thirteen years unfortunately. 

Like when I want to unwind, I put on music and I do something creative be it writing, art, cooking, baking, etc...If I’m doing laundry or vacuuming, I’m thinking about my novel or my fanfic and constructing it in my head to write later when I get a chance. I took an eleven day break from all writing projects to devote all my free time to processing photos and the whole time I did a lot of productive thinking about what I’m writing, which is going to make the typing process go faster when I get to it. 

I think another factor to it too is that I’m not married, I’m not dating, I don’t get out much due to lack of resources/friends in my area, and I don’t have any kids. If I had any of these things then I’d probably have less time for creative pursuits. Like even if I get a job eventually, I just don’t have the social demands most people do 

#ladyofdecember #ask box replies #ymmv #sorry this got kind of long

[miss-bennie]

hey can you please advise me, i'm majoring in english and recently i've realised that i'm inclined heavily towards reading for pleasure than analysing text. whatever i write in my papers/exams doesn't feel original and i feel as if i'm just iterating ideas from dozens of different sources. this sem we've got to analyze lots of poetry and i'm stressed cause i don't get it at all. i used to love lit and i had to REALLY convince my parents for allowing me to take it. can you suggest anything?thanks

hey it's the lit anon (hipe you haven't forgotten about me!) i just want to add to the list of the questions that is it okay if i find analysing poetry much, much harder than prose/ plays.

Oh my goodness, first of all, it is legitimately CRIMINAL how long it took for me to answer this; it honestly was just because I don’t have the time at work I used to in order to answer things properly, which leads to a lot of disappointment.  However!  I really hope that anything I say now, far too long later, will be helpful or comforting to you.  I’m going to put the rest of this under a read more to save people’s dashes (and before I do, please please feel free to hit me up on Tumblr messenger about this, because it is way easier for me to keep up with people on there since it’s basically like texting via tumblr on my phone, lol):

This really is a normal way to feel, for a start - it’s difficult to make a switch from reading entirely for pleasure into critical analysis.  I know I struggled with it a lot - I had to strike a balance between fun/analysis.  It was a help to sort of realize that even when you’re reading for pleasure/fun, you are still analyzing the text in a way, just not within the same framework as an English major, you know?  So like, say you’re reading a novel and telling a friend about it, to recommend it to them - what are the sort of things you say?  That’s still analysis.  So you can kind of turn that eye “hey, I loved this book, the character/plot/etc was great” into a deeper look into WHY you liked it.  And even if it’s something you’re reading for school and you’re not enjoying it, think about WHY you don’t, or try to think of things you do like.  Another thing that helped me out with that is reading other critical theory or analyses of what we were reading and trying to reframe how I thought about it?  I feel like this seems overly simplistic, but I know it can be very, very hard.

As for feeling like you’re just regurgitating other people’s interpretations, that is the most frustrating thing, I know.  Especially when it’s a text that’s been analyzed a million times.  What I can say here is to take advantage of office hours and talk to your professors!  Bouncing your ideas off of them and getting guidance can really be helpful in pointing you in the right direction.  Even if you bring one of your papers in to them and say, “hey, I feel like I’m not saying something original here, can you help?”  Because sometimes you might be onto a new thread of thought without realizing!  When you’re taking a ton of lit classes, it’s so easy to burn out and feel like you’re just repeating yourself over and over when in reality you might have a real gem as a throwaway thought in there that can turn into something great!  

For the difference between prose and poem/plays, that is because you approach each of those mediums differently!  I always struggled when I took a survey course that covered more than one of those things at the same time, because it’s difficult to switch between, in my opinion.  There are different nuances in each one.  And prose always was infinitely easier for me, but the longer I spent immersing myself in the other two, the more I at the very least came to appreciate what was there (plays, lol) versus fully enjoying what I didn’t see before (poetry).  And even within those genres some are WAY harder.  You’re not going to approach an Arthur Miller play the same way you’d approach Euripedes, and you wouldn’t approach either of those the same way you’d approach Shakespeare.  The thing about being an English major that people don’t realize is that there are SO many layers to it, one could say that it contains multitudes.  (I’m sorry, I can’t help myself.)  Is there a particular kind of poetry or play that you are having issues with?  

As someone whose parents were also.....skeptical when I was like I’M GONNA BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR!!!! I really get you on this, and it actually got easier for me after the first tough year because the more I got into it, the more I could choose a track that was more tailored to what I really liked and was most interested in!  Is there anything you’ve studied this year that you truly enjoyed?  Sometimes it’s a matter of finding that one big THING that just grabs you and flips the script.  Like, you’ll think, “man, poetry is the worrrrrst” and then you’ll pick something up and it’ll hit you.  Or maybe it won’t!  It could be a slow burn of realizing you actually enjoyed something and then you seek out similar things.  I remember the summer after my first year, I was rereading a book I’d loved before, and without realizing I discovered new things about it that gave me a deeper understanding, just from spending all that time in a different mode while I was in school.  

All of this being said, if at the end of the day you decide that you’d rather simply enjoy what you read instead of studying it, that’s okay too.  There is no one perfect way to do something, you know?  Fill up your extra classes with things that seem interesting to you just in case.  (I ended up double majoring in Art History simply because I loved it and took so many classes it made sense, hahaha, another one my parents were thrilled about.)  I hope this was even a tiny bit helpful to you, and please feel free to come to me ANYTIME, I promise promise promise it won’t always be a month before I’m able to answer.

#answered #and trust me #every single english major #will have one or two things #they absolutely HATED #we're all in this together #<3 #Anonymous