|
|
We come from monkeys, swingin' in the trees
Little bit of monkey inside you and me
Monkey in the middle
Monkey on your back
It's a fundamental problem but a scientific fact: we come from monkeys!
So - completely unintentionally, monkeys have become my daughter's mascot. Fully half of her toys and clothes are monkeys, monkey-themed, or have monkeys on them. We didn't plan this or buy these for her, they just sort of... accumulated.
Open thread! Monkeys are awesome! They brachiate! (True fact: I ask the GM to let me take "brachiation" as a skill in every roleplaying game I play in.) Some of them have prehensile tails! They have adorable almost-human faces! What's not to love? Do you have any cool trivia about monkeys, or stories about seeing monkeys in a zoo or in the wild? (Alternately, do you hate monkeys, and if so, why? Did one steal your keys,
Night At The Museum-style?) Share!
~ Kristycat
Wednesday Reminder! Open threads are meant to be fun, chatty places to discuss anything that doesn’t “fit” into a deconstruction or other regular thread. This can be something totally off-the-wall and random, or it can be something interesting that a deconstruction prompted you to think of, but which would be derailing to get into in the deconstruction thread. When in doubt, move it over here - that’s what it’s for!
And as always, please post new comments, rather than replying to other comments!
Shut Up!
We have switched over* from Fringe to Once Upon A Time and I LOVE IT SO MUCH. I love it more than I love almost all the things.
I love it almost as much as I love Elementary. And that is a LOT.
That is all.
* I'm still going to try to finish Fringe out for deconstruction purposes, but it's no longer dinner-teevee, as Husband has announced that he no longer cares what happens to any of the characters and never wants to see another episode again after the two-fer anti-choice / free-your-mind episodes which were each odious in their own way.
ETA: Also, Disqus appears to be down for the evening. EVERYWHERE.
Shut Up!
[Content Note: Body Transformation, Racism]
Narnia Recap: In which Eustace is turned into a dragon.
Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Chapter 6: The Adventures of Eustace
When we were last in Narnia, we were dealing with the Theologies of rolling around in a pile of dragon gold and considering how best to spend it, which is obviously a sin when Eustace Scrubb does it but was not a sin when the four Pevensies were merrily digging through their swiffy hidden treasure vault back in Prince Caspian.
Shut Up!
|
|
Folks, I'm not trying to be mean, but it's been 10 days since I asked everyone to read the updated comment policy, and 7 days since I asked everyone again to read it, specifically because we're getting a LOT of people using the Disqus "reply" function in ways they are not supposed to here. Additionally, almost every open thread for months has asked people not to use the reply function for anything more than extremely short (i.e., twelve words or less) "I agree" type statements.
It is very frustrating to be forced to repeatedly ask people to observe in this space a courtesy that was instituted because I and others here have a visual processing disability which makes parsing nested comments extremely difficult and frequently outright painful. It is additionally very frustrating to keep feeling like I'm being a big meanie for asking people to observe this courtesy in a disability-activist space where I have spoken extensively about the importance of remembering and accommodating disabilities.
I really do not want to institute a rule where long replies are deleted on sight, but that is what I am being gradually pushed into by the continued mentality in this space that the comment policy I keep asking people to read only applies to other, newer commenters and not to regulars here. I either have to start deleting good comments to "make the point" forcefully enough, or I have to withdraw from the board entirely and not read the comments on my board. Neither of those possibilities are attractive to me.
I am going to ask again that everyone here be cognizant of this and adjust their commenting practices accordingly. I want to remind everyone here that the new comment policy is required reading for commenting here for a reason. Thank you.
[Related Reading: Remembrance]
Shut Up!
|
|
|
Ahh, karaoke. One of the finer things in life. There's nothing quite like getting together with a bunch of your friends, going out on a Friday or Saturday night, and listen to drunken strangers butcher "Black Velvet" and "Love Shack."
Seriously, I love karaoke.
I love the camaraderie of a good karaoke joint. Everyone there is on the same side: they want you to be awesome. I remember one night when I started a song in the wrong key and couldn't get back on track - a total stranger, no joke, jumped up next to me, leaned into the mic, sang a few bars in a strong voice, and hopped down once I got it. I could've kissed her in gratitude, and I nailed the song after that :)
Open thread! Do you enjoy singing karaoke? Are you the person who's stoked about belting out your favorite songs, the person who's kinda shy but might try a song or two after a few beers, or the person who'd rather just sit and watch other people get up and sing? (Or the person who just cannot stand karaoke, and if you never hear another guy who thinks he can sing warbling his way through "I Love This Bar," it'll be too soon?)
~ Kristycat
Monday Reminder! While I have fun coming up with pretty pictures and/or interesting “prompt” questions for open threads, you aren’t limited to those! These threads are open - go wild, talk about whatever moves you! (Just remember that this is still a safe space, please!)
And as always, please post new comments, rather than replying to other comments!
Shut Up!
[Content Note: Drug Addiction, Child Abuse, Stockholm Syndrome, Reversal Twist, Surgery]
Official Episode Synopsis: Sherlock and Watson consult on a child abduction case involving a serial killer who is nicknamed "The Balloon Man," because he leaves a signature batch of balloons at each of his crime scenes.
Elementary, (Season 1 | Episode 3) "Child Predator"
So, hey, content note upfront: this episode involves child abduction, child abuse, Stockholm syndrome, and then a reversal twist where a victim turns out to be a victimizer. One of the praises I've heaped on this show in the past is that it doesn't rely on this trope nearly as often as some crime dramas do, but it is here for this episode and not everyone will want to come along for the ride. So here's a content note upfront and I'll try to handle the issues herein sensitively.
Shut Up!
“And still, after all this time, the Sun has never said to the Earth,
"You owe me."
Look what happens with love like that.
It lights up the sky.”
―
Rumi
Friday Recommendations! What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately? Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s coming up, give us something new to explore! (Note: don’t forget to post new comments rather than replying to other comments!)
~ Kristycat
Shut Up!
Free Kindle books today that look interesting:
Shut Up!
[Content Note: Minor True Blood Spoiler, Religious Upbringing]
Twilight Summary: In Chapter 14, Edward and Bella spend the night together.
Twilight, Chapter 14: Mind Over Matter
So here's something that is probably going to shock everyone: I think Chapter 14 is probably my favorite chapter of Twilight. (And, yeah, I know, I said something similar about Chapters 12 and 13.) And it's funny for me to say that because Chapters 12, 13, and 14 all contain some hugely unhealthy problematic stuff in them. And we need to look at that.
Shut Up!
[Content Note: Ableist Narratives]
Related Reading:
The NetGalley Wellness Challenge
Shut Up!
[Content Note: Anti-Choice Narratives, Forced Birth, Rape]
Welp, I hadn't planned on making a Fringe deconstruction tag, but I guess I'm going to have to because I am now seriously annoyed about last night's episode: Bloodline.
First, a quick recap below the cut.
Shut Up!
|
|
|
The bees are disappearing!
Actually, no joke, they totally are, and if I were a responsible adult I would be concerned for real live environmental reasons. Because I'm not, however, I'm concerned because I like honey and because I think bees are cool.
In high school, our campus was invaded by bees (actually Carolina yellow jackets). In short order, I became the bee (read: yellow jacket) whisperer: the girl who could have five wasps crawling on her face and not freak out; the one who could swipe a panicked yellow jacket out of the air mid-classroom, calm it down, and deposit it outside. At the height of the invasion, they would swarm anyone who dared eat lunch outside; I was one of the few who negotiated a truce, filling my soda bottle cap full of sugar water and placing it a few feet from my food, thus letting them drink their fill while I enjoyed my lunch unmolested. Somehow other kids felt this was giving in. Wevs, I got to eat my cookies without worrying about getting stung.
Open thread! How do you feel about bees? How do you feel about wasps? Are there any insects you have a particular affinity to? If you're allergic to bees, does that give you more incentive to stay calm around them, or make you more afraid of them? Any cool stories regarding bees or wasps? Have you ever made an uncanny connection to a wild animal?
~ Kristycat
Wednesday Reminder! Open threads are meant to be fun, chatty places to discuss anything that doesn’t “fit” into a deconstruction or other regular thread. This can be something totally off-the-wall and random, or it can be something interesting that a deconstruction prompted you to think of, but which would be derailing to get into in the deconstruction thread. When in doubt, move it over here - that’s what it’s for!
And as always, please post new comments, rather than replying to other comments!
Shut Up!
There's a sale on 4 different editions of The Hobbit at Amazon right now. I'd run down the details, but they're more adequately explained here.
Shut Up!
If you buy from Amazon Kindle and aren't already aware of it, ereaderiq has a really great "watchlist" service for Kindle books. All you have to do is load the Kindle books you want into your Amazon wishlist, make the wishlist public for a one-time sync (you can make the list private again afterwards), and then eReaderIQ will send you notifications when the book price drops by whatever amount or percentage you set. (I usually set for $1 drops.)
The service is free; the site makes its money by embedding an affiliate code in all its links, which you don't have to use but are certainly convenient for one-click access. The email alerts look like this:
Shut Up!
[Content Note: Body Transformation, Death, Suicide, Disablism, Racism]
Narnia Recap: In which Eustace is turned into a dragon.
Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Chapter 6: The Adventures of Eustace
When we last left Eustace, he had been herded by the author into a Valley of No Escape and was trembling before a dangerous creature that he doesn't recognize (the narrative states that he doesn't even know the word "dragon") and torn between hoping the dragon won't eat him versus noticing with some degree of pity that the dragon is old and weak.
Shut Up!
Folks, we've had a lot of people using Disqus Replies today for comments that are significantly longer than 12 words. Please familiarize yourself with the comment policy and the Disqus rules therein. I really don't want to start deleting good comments just because they are nested as replies, and would prefer not to have to grapple with that as an option.
Thank you in advance for reading and understanding the policy.
Shut Up!
|
|
|
What does a whale have to do with Mother's Day?
Nothing, why?
Regardless. Yesterday was Mother's Day, a day which I'm shamelessly choosing to declare the
most important holiday ever, for reasons that have nothing to do at ALL with the fact that I got free chocolate. Nothing at all. No bias here.
Anyway. Open thread! Anyone do anything nice with their family (biological, adopted, chosen, married-into, whatever) yesterday? Do you like Mother's Day, or is it yet another fake holiday invented to make us feel like we have to buy cards, chocolates, and flowers? Do you celebrate it with your own mom, and if not, do you have a stand-in "mom" that you recognize instead? Does anyone have any creative ideas for celebrating the day that step away from the traditional flowers-card-chocolate routine?
~ Kristycat
Monday Reminder! While I have fun coming up with pretty pictures and/or interesting “prompt” questions for open threads, you aren’t limited to those! These threads are open - go wild, talk about whatever moves you! (Just remember that this is still a safe space, please!)
And as always, please post new comments, rather than replying to other comments!
Shut Up!
[Content Note: Fringe spoilers, Abuse, Non-Consensual Bodily Autonomy Issues, Misogyny. Seriously, this is a massively triggery/spoilery post.]
I mentioned in an earlier post that Husband and I have been watching Fringe and that I have mixed feelings about it. Those mixed feelings have only gotten more mixed: it's deeply frustrating to watch something that had so much potential in terms of plot and yet which has horribly monstrous people for protagonists while doggedly trying to backpedal so as to insist that, no really, they aren't that monstrous after all and that the whole foreshadowed redemptive path turned out to be hard and so we're not going to do that after all.
This is Olivia Dunham:
Shut Up!
|
|
|
[Content Note: Abuse]
Leaving Narnia. Returning to Kansas. I don't know what else to call it, and there's probably a more formalized name for this trope, but a quick search didn't net me anything. But broadly-speaking, I'm becoming more than a little disenchanted with fantasy stories where the protagonist (usually a small child) sorts shit out in a troubled fantasy world, gains friends and prestige and (optionally) love interests, and then in the final pages of the narrative either gets shoved back into the Real World without their consent (a la Narnia) or chooses to go back for no more compelling reason* than because the authors felt like that was The Right Thing To Do.
* In the specific case I'm thinking of, which I won't share because spoilers, so instead I'm invoking Oz and Narnia because those are fairly common knowledge.
To be super-clear, I don't have a problem with protagonists choosing how to live their lives and making their own happy endings. There's nothing wrong with choosing to go back to the Real World because of parents or friends or preference or because otherwise you'll never eat another ice cream sandwich again. That's fine. But I do have a problem with the fact that I'm starting to feel like this trope is frequently invoked because the authors felt like it would be actively Wrong for any protagonist to decide that zie likes the fantasy world better than their original "home", and I disagree with that assertion. There's nothing intrinsically or morally "Right" about accepting the world you were born into as fundamentally better for you than anywhere else: it's a valid choice, but not the only valid choice.
And I additionally can't help but feel that this underlying assumption -- that taking an opportunity to leave forever a place that may not be healthy or safe for you, rather than trying to stick with it and work it out because it builds character or whatever -- is deeply problematic when it runs in parallel with various different types of marginalizations. Sometimes abuse victims seriously just need to get out; sometimes people dealing with homophobic and/or transphobic cultures and families choose to leave for their own safety. Sometimes a magic world is just objectively better for a person with a disability, or anyone else in search of a magical fix** to a life-affecting issue.
** I can't help but note after typing these words that the very phrase "magical fix" sounds synonymous with 'lazy' and/or 'morally degenerate' to a lot of people in our culture. How fucked up is that?
Yet if we're constantly being presented with this cultural narrative that pleasant places are great for vacations and character building but that, ultimately, there's No Place Like Home and -- more fundamentally -- it's actually morally wrong to permanently leave home forever, even if that choice to leave is motivated by self-care, then there are a lot of harmful messages accompanying that cultural trend.
I get why a lot of authors take this route: on the surface, it's optimistic. Characters Johnny and Jenny have Learned Valuable Lessons and will now use their knowledge and determination to make the world a Better Place for themselves and others. On a meta-level, the author knows that the reader can't realistically aspire to live in Oz or Narnia, but zie can aspire to take those lessons and improve their lives, just as Johnny and Jenny chose to do, when leaving their fantasy world and going back home! I understand the appeal of this trope to authors, as a neat, tidy ending tinted with rosy optimism and can-do spirit.
But still ... I'd like to see just a few more people stay in Oz and Narnia, and I'd like to see that condoned as a morally neutral choice, no better or worse than coming home to England and Kansas. And I'd love to see at least a few authors highlight why that is, and how some people in our culture are marginalized more deeply than others. Because privileged readers like Kim and Kenny kinda need to hear that there's more to life than making their lives easier -- there are also people out there suffering even more than they are, people who can't make their lives easier just by employing hard work and determination. And marginalized readers like Sarah and Shawn could probably stand to hear that when their lives are too hard and too painful for them to bear, it doesn't mean they are to blame for not being smart enough or trying hard enough.
And I think that's another reason why I find this ending trope depressing: sometimes the authorial choice that seems "optimistic" is really quite depressing if you poke too hard at it. If there's really is "no place like home", then a lot of us are in a bad place with no way out. Just saying.
Shut Up!
[Content Note: Chronic Pain, Weight Loss Programs]
I always hesitate to write disability posts because they always sound to me like I'm the whiniest whiner in the world. But then I remember how much mail I get in regards to my disability posts thanking me for talking about chronic pain and invisible disabilities, and I remind myself that emoting is not only a valid form of activism, but also my most comfortable mode of expression. So having said all that, I want to talk about something that has become a symbol of my disability for me lately as it progressively gets worse, and that symbol is this pedometer:
Shut Up!
