jedilemon

[jedilemon]

Every time i purchase a moderately expensive item the Karl Marx on my shoulder is like "For shame... you purchase yet another pair of jeans when you have 5 already at home, you despicable commodity fetishist? In my time, a man with five outfits would consider himself blessed beyond measure, and yet you want for more, while there are children starving in the world??" to which the second Karl Marx on my other shoulder says "Objection! Those 5 pairs of jeans all wildly uncomfortable or have holes in the ass, due to the decline of clothing quality driven by the fast fashion industry, unfortunately making this purchase a necessity... Plus, by purchasing a slightly more expensive pair of jeans from an independent brand, seeking quality over 'brand recognition', they are deliberately trying to avoid engaging in conspicuous consumption!" to which the third Karl Marx clinging to my back like that beetle from Doctor Who says "Remember, my friend; the less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theatre or to balls, or to the pub, and the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you will be able to save and the greater will become your treasure which neither moth nor rust will corrupt — your capital. Buy the jeans," to which I say "I don't know if any of you have actually read Karl Marx"

[jedilemon]

i cannot stand the “let men be friends” thing anymore. no it’s gay now. really gay. Sorry

[jedilemon]

Star Wars as tweets/textposts pt.2

<- | SW | ->

[jedilemon]

does anyone wanna hold hands until we feel a little braver

[jedilemon]

The Great Goodreads Diss List (Part 1)

Context: For many years now, I have been collecting funny lines from Goodreads reviews to share with my coworkers. (I do collection development, reader's advisory, and weeding at a public library, so I read a LOT of reviews)

Are some of these, perhaps, rather mean? Yes, but they are also very funny, and come from a place of honest frustration. In the tradition of Bargepole threads and lists everywhere, names and titles have been censored.

"First, I want to say that I understand how hard it is to write a book and how amazing it is when it is actually published. Congrats to the author for that accomplishment. That said--"

"Warning: This review will be lengthy due to pure hatred."

"I found myself feeling really, really annoyed with the world that this book is allowed to exist. We live in a universe where the passenger pigeon is extinct but this book goes along merrily being read by unsuspecting lovers of words and ideas and stories? It just seems like too much, you know?"

"Don't do it. Don't spring the cash for the hardcover. Instead, eat an entire bag of Twizzlers, spend some money you don't have at a high-end department store, look up on Facebook the shady college boyfriend that made you cry, research the current value of your home or 401K and then read all about how the big hedge fund managers are faring during the economic crisis. You'll feel about the same stomach pain if you waste your time reading this book."

"This wretched novel begins with the mugging of an old lady and it appears I may be in the process of repeating that loathsome crime as [author] was 78 when she wrote it. It is not nice to put the boot into such a poor defenseless old creature lying there with only a damehood, a Booker Prize and a few million quid. It’s a nasty job but somebody has to do it."

"I think this is the way dead people would write, if they could."

"I am considering setting up SPABB: Society for the Protection of Accurate Book Blurb. This blurb appears to have been written by someone from the publishers who met [the author] the night before, got very drunk, lost his notes and then constructed something in a fug of hangover the next morning."

"I congratulate [the author] on the early half of his book, which was thoroughly fun and made me laugh and think. I congratulate [the author] on the second half of his book, for finishing it. It reads like that was difficult."

"…a woman whose taste in contemporary literature has roughly the same batting average as a pitcher in the National League."

"The author is a pompous windbag."

"Recommends it for: No one. Recommended to me by: A friend who apparently wished to cause me great suffering."

"Makes me wonder: is it possible to obtain similes at a volume discount?"

"The repeated phrases made me want to mail a thesaurus to the author."

"I'm disappointed in myself for finishing this book."

"if the author described [character's] eyes as "obsidian" one more time I was tempted to write her and ask if her thesaurus broke."

"They say that an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters would, if given infinite time, eventually produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. [This book], on the other hand, would probably take the average monkey just under two hours."

"I can't imagine what the author had to do to get this nadir of Western literature printed on innocent trees, but he does seem to know a LOT about being well-connected in New York."

"This book is so bad it is almost worth reading just to make you appreciate the other books you are reading."

"Reads like it was written by a brilliant author, the night before it was due."

"raises interesting questions, like: can a book be so bad as to constitute an act of terrorism"

"has this author ever spoken to a human woman"

"This acorn has fallen so far from the tree that it can’t even see the forest."

"I’m guessing they are touted as ‘beach reads’ because no one will care if they get dropped into the ocean."

"This book begins with all the energy of a hand vacuum near the end of its battery life, and the pace doesn't quicken much from there."

"At least everybody’s eyes stayed the same color this time around."

[jedilemon]

i love things that come in glass jars because once its over the glass jar is mine

[jedilemon]

[jedilemon]

can you please get into everything you think is pretty willfully ignored about ROTS in favour of flattening the story into something that’s more individually palatable

so, fundamentally, the OT and the PT are two different kinds of story; the OT is a hero's journey, and the PT is a tragedy. this necessitates and allows for different elements of lucas' worldbuilding to be showcased in each. in the OT, the empire is allowed to be a very flat, cynical force for evil, because it's the force that luke has to valiantly slam his shoulder into, repeatedly, in order to complete his hero's journey, and it suited the anti-war film that lucas had set out to make before he started throwing literally every other genre into it. ANH came out in 1977, from the mind of someone who'd had their brain dunked into the protests against the vietnam war and then set to spin cycle. lucas has said as much; The Empire is a vague stand-in for every empire, borrows the styling of fascist regimes as a visual cue for the audience to go, "hm, evil," without ever having to depict actual fascism onscreen.

this was a smart choice, because fascism is an incredibly hard thing to define clearly, much less defining it clearly and also getting through all of the other worldbuilding star wars had to get through in order to be understandable to anyone. the famous opening crawl, actually, was a result of lucas struggling to both have a coherent film and slam a lot of worldbuilding into a film people otherwise weren't going to understand - lucas showed the cut of episode three to (iirc) spielberg, who essentially was like, what the fuck is happening? the crawl itself exists because the OT had to do a lot with very little time, and so, because the OT is your introduction to star wars, it is a simple hero's journey, with one notable twist. it doesn't try to be anything else and it doesn't need to be.

the PT is different. people at this point know the universe of star wars, and they know how these movies end. there's been other writers hacking away at the GFFA for years, and star wars has a dedicated fanbase of people who pick over the films like vultures - it's not some movie attempting to be a success, it is a smash fucking hit, a runaway train of success that has made lucas enough money that he can do whatever he wants even if everyone around him fucking hates it. (and everyone did. studio executives very hilariously told lucas that he was going to kill star wars with nine year old darth vader.) the PT has the time and the investment to be different, and to stretch further, than the OT ever did. and in his glee, i do think lucas bit off more than he could chew, because he introduced audiences to an enormous galaxy, a wildly complicated takeover scheme, the romance on which all the films depend on, and the moral decay of the one character all six films have in common, and jesus christ there was no way in fucking sam hell that he was going to deliver something satisfying on every front.

throughout the PT you can see the bones of points lucas was trying to make, and the skeleton is there, it's just also joined by nine other half-complete skeletons; each find is individually interesting but the payoff is either buried in scripts, deleted scenes, or was forced to be dropped, like jar jar. jar jar originally had a subplot in AOTC that touched on the ways he was forced to conform once arriving on coruscant, forgoing his racist and grating speech pattern from TPM for an upper-cut lightly posh way of speaking, that's common to all of the characters from coruscant and is reminiscent of the vaguely british accents of a lot of the characters that represent the empire. i'm not saying that subplot would have been executed well, and it's good for my sanity that it was cut, but i am saying that lucas had intended to weave in another thread about how the republic expects everyone to conform to a set normal long before the empire even comes to power, in another of lucas' many attempts to convey; the republic is becoming the empire without palpatine's input. palpatine seizes an opportunity; he doesn't create one.

this is undercut by how (extremely) convoluted the plot to create the clone wars becomes in AOTC, which is a film that tries its best to set up the political drama of the era but ultimately kind of fails. i mean, even among dedicated star wars fans, there's really really little discussion about the segment of the opening crawl that specifies that jedi are run ragged trying to mediate between planets and the republic before everything boils over to war, which, like, i'd consider that pretty necessary context for every choice made in AOTC, but it's largely ignored even by the vultures. so a lot of what AOTC tries to do in regards to developing the republic further as the failed state that it is - because TPM introduces us to a state that's in complete fucking failure - ends up being shunted off on ROTS, which is a movie that already had an enormous amount to do and little time to accomplish it, and this makes certain bits of ROTS fucking fascinating and there will never be any delivery on any of it because there's no more star wars. (there is no disney in ba sing se. there is no disney in ba sing se. there is n)

like, just to lead you through a Thought Diagram of how insane some of the underexplored elements of ROTS are:

palpatine has taken over the government before the movie fucking starts. you start this film without a hope of winning. lucas absolutely never wanted anyone to believe the republic was a force for good, because every film opens with it in an evolving state of failure - in TPM, it is powerless to stop a corporation from invading an entire planet and rounding up its population into labor camps to exploit their labor to collect a debt, which is before palpatine does anything more than fuck around as one senator among thousands. palpatine isn't shown to manipulate The Entire Republic. the system itself is already broken, and he does nothing that isn't perfectly legal within the system. in AOTC, the film begins with the galaxy - once again - on the precipice of a civil war, and the ending battle of AOTC on geonosis is actually really chilling, because what starts as an arena duel melts seamlessly into full scale war without anyone stopping it. and in fact, by the end of the film, everyone involved continues to escalate. when ROTS opens, you open with the republic's leader captured and chained - the republic has nearly essentially lost. lucas tied the brokenness of the republic, and its complete failure to be successful at anything, to the plot as integral to its ability to move forward in the way that it does - you are never supposed to want to fight for the republic. that's fucking fascinating.

so all of the characters are trapped in the eternal bell jar of being motivated to protect a fundamentally broken system. not only are their motivations futile to us, who know how this story ends, their motivations are futile within the GFFA itself, because the republic isn't salvageable. it is never successful at being a state. it is never successful at being government. ROTS becomes the film where everyone looks around and finally sees the bell jar, and panics; the frog has finally, finally, finally noticed that the water is boiling. almost all of the characters are then tasked with reacting to the reality of the bell jar; padme, seeing the republic is broken, wants to tape over the cracks with the loyalist committee. the jedi council actively discusses a military coup. anakin, perhaps the guy with the shittiest response ever to realizing the water is boiling, decides this is the same water he's been in all his life so it can't be wrong, and not only does he love the bell jar he is trapped in, he'll slaughter any perceived threats to it.

you can see evidence of the above scattered everywhere through the film. padme pensively asking anakin if the republic has become the very thing they were fighting against, anakin's horror at her disloyalty; the council, as mentioned, discussing taking over the fucking senate, which is an insane thing no one ever talks about; palpatine's classic I AM THE SENATE (note: he was, in fact, the senate); and the famous, "this is how liberty dies." everyone fucking applauded, because most people lie dead center between padme and anakin - they like the bell jar because it feels safe, even though they probably wouldn't slaughter small children to protect it.

you are never, ever supposed to believe the republic is a Good Institution that's Worth Saving, because it is never shown as anything other than a failure. the one character, the singular character in all of the PT who has seen the bell jar from the start, is palpatine, who is the guy who uses it to climb to the very top of centralized power in the GFFA.

that all said, a lot of discussion intentionally ignores the blatant reality that the republic is a failure of a government, and that ROTS is a movie where all the characters in it suddenly see the boom mic in the shot, realize that they've spent blood, sweat, and tears defending an institution that was a complete lie far before palpatine did any breaking. i'm not sure what the motivation for ignoring such a significant part of the story is - maybe it's to make specific characters look better for fighting tooth and nail on the republic's behalf, but every character in the PT defends it, i'm not sure why we're playing the Blame Game with fictional dudes who are all equally guilty of drinking the damn kool aid. but in order to thoroughly enjoy what is one of my favorite aspects of the PT, you have to accept that the premise of the PT fundamentally requires everyone who believes in the republic as an institution to be very wrong about that.

[jedilemon]

Funniest possible stance for Brucie Wayne to publically take is a firmly-rooted belief that Batman doesn't exist.

"I've never once been rescued by this so-called hero and I've been kidnapped 14 times already this year."

"Why would the police summon him with a giant lantern? Wouldn't that make more sense for Mothman?"

"I know what you can do with Photoshop, these doctored pictures can't fool me! Tim's a whiz with photos, have you seen his latest exhibit..?"

"Vigilantism is illegal, you can't do that."

[jedilemon]

there’s a little detail that i didn’t notice about “the blue spirit” when i first watched it.  when zuko returns to his ship after his misadventures at ponhuai, avatar-less and honorless and still puzzling over aang’s speech and having made an enemy of zhao and probably severely concussed, iroh is there on deck.  

music night happened the previous night.  and yet it’s morning when zuko returns, and iroh is still playing the tsungi horn on deck.  

iroh waited up all night for zuko to come back.  

it’s such a small detail, but speaks volumes about their relationship.  iroh not only allows zuko to sneak out in order to free the avatar in order to preserve his chance at regaining his honor, iroh actually subtly encorages zuko to free aang from ponhuai, even though he clearly knows that there’s every possibilty that zuko will be caught by zhao and iroh will not be able to save him.  

as the guardian of a teenager, iroh’s influence over zuko is limited.  iroh must allow zuko the freedom to chase after the destiny he thinks he wants, iroh cannot always protect zuko or keep him out of danger, iroh cannot even demonstrate affection to zuko in the way he would clearly like to because zuko is too hurt and guarded to be able to accept it from him - 

- but iroh can wait up for him.  

iroh can sit up all night, just to make sure that zuko gets home safely.  

and it is such a striking element of their relationship, because I waited up all night for you becomes the unspoken love language by which they communicate caring and affection for each other.  

iroh waits all night for zuko to return safely from ponhuai stronghold. iroh stays up while zuko sleeps on the ferry and waits up for zuko to return home from his date with jin. iroh sits up all night watching over zuko when he is sick and feverish.  

and it’s not one-sided, because zuko waits up for iroh.  

zuko waits up all night watching over an injured iroh after azula blasts him with blue fire.  zuko sits up all night waiting for iroh to wake up when they reunite at the white lotus camp.

and this gesture becomes so important to zuko that it even becomes the way he demonstrates caring and concern for the members of the gaang.  zuko waits up all night in appa’s saddle, knowing that sokka is planning a rescue mission.  zuko waits up all night for katara to wake, knowing she needs to confront her own deeply-felt anger before she can understand and let go of it.  

and this even is the gesture by which aang first demonstrates friendship to zuko.  after zuko is knocked out by an arrow to his blue spirit mask, aang sits up with zuko for the rest of the night until zuko wakes up, just to make sure zuko is all right.

and the concept of sitting up all night for you is such a poignant contrast to zuko’s memory of his mother, who vanished out his life in the middle of the night, waking him up for a last goodbye.  

it’s pretty clear that iroh sitting up all night with a sick child was far from an unusual occasion.   i think it was probably really important for zuko to be shown, again and again and again, that he has someone who will be there when morning comes.  

one parent left zuko in the night - but one parent will always wait up for him to come home.  

[jedilemon]

Cultural Anatomy: Ty Lee’s Fighting Style

Another long-scroll post ahead!

As always, I just want to say that I know very little about the technical aspects of most martial arts so take these analyses with a grain of salt. These are just surface-level comparisons I’m making based off what I’ve researched on the internet. If you practice any of these martial arts, feel free to elaborate or correct me on any details.

Watching compilations of Ty Lee’s fight scenes, it seems that her style varies depending on the opponent.

White Crane Fist

Generally, if she’s confident that she has the upper-hand, she appears to use White Crane Fist (白鶴拳). This is most apparent during her 2-against-1 fight with Katara and every fight she has with Sokka.

The most obvious indication that Ty Lee is using White Crane Fist would be the “beak hands” or gōu shǒu (钩手) she often employs when fighting. As you might have guessed, White Crane Fist seeks to imitate the movements of a crane, particularly its sharp pecks.

However, when her opponent is at a distance from her, she’ll extend her reach by using “sword fingers” instead of “beak hands”. Sword fingers are used for lightning generation and Azula often uses them for firebending as well, so it’s might have been a technique that Ty Lee picked up from the Fire Princess.

According to this website, Crane Fist emphasizes circular movements, grace, and subtlety. The style also requires strong balance, reach, agility, and speed over brute force— all qualities of Ty Lee. Finally, Crane Fist frequently targets the tender spots of the body, hence why Ty Lee often aims for the rib cage or armpits when she fights. It also explains why Ty Lee was not prepared when Sokka countered one of her strikes with his exceptionally hard head. All in all, never challenge Ty Lee to a tickle fight.

According to oral tradition, White Crane Fist was invented by a woman named Fang Qiniang (方七娘), who combined her training in Shaolin Kung Fu with the movements of the white crane to create a new martial art. This makes the style especially appropriate for Ty Lee, as Shaolin is also the fighting style of the Fire Nation. Plus, Ty Lee is a very girlish character so it fits her personality to use a style invented by a woman.

Phoenix Eye Fist

When Ty Lee is disadvantaged in a fight, usually when facing armored opponents, she switches to Phoenix Eye Fist (凤眼拳).

Depending on the source, Phoenix Eye Fist is either descended from White Crane or simply techniques within White Crane. Either way, the two styles are very similar. The most obvious difference between White Crane and Phoenix Eye are the ways the hands are held: Crane uses a “beak hand”, while Phoenix Eye uses a one knuckle punch (a fist with the fore-knuckle extended).

The advantage of the Phoenix Fist is that it focuses all of your power into a single hard point, giving each blow greater strength and impact. As a result, Phoenix Fist techniques often focus on strikes to the spine, in addition to the usual “soft spots” (throat, groin, etc.) targeted in White Crane.

While I’ve never practiced either style, Phoenix Eye seems a bit more vicious than White Crane, considering all the spinal attacks. It makes sense that Ty Lee usually only uses this technique when her opponent’s back is covered in armor. Nonetheless, digging your knuckle into people’s spines with all the force of a punch is really brutal. Ty Lee is easily the scariest non-bender in Avatar.

If you’d like to see a real-life demonstration of White Crane Fist and Phoenix Eye Fist, click here.

Additional Thoughts

1. Maybe Ty Lee’s gravity defying leaps are meant to emphasize her bird-like fighting style? Also, Ty Lee’s use of circular movements and tendency to get behind people in a fight does add credence to the “Ty Lee has Air Nomad ancestry” fan theory.

2. She also uses Phoenix Fist hands when she fights a non-armored Suki at the Boiling Rock, though she never lands her signature spine jabs. I wonder if Ty Lee’s use of a more brutal style means that Suki was just that much of a threat or if she was fighting that way to appease Azula, who would not approve of her showing mercy during a fight.

Her variety of styles is also another indication that Ty Lee was never a very villainous antagonist, as she only uses as much force as necessary to take down an opponent. Jeong Jeong would very much approve of her self control.

Like what I’m doing? Tips always appreciated, never expected. ^_^

https://ko-fi.com/atlaculture

[jedilemon]

this is a confession to the star wars fandom because I have to get this off my chest. last summer just for fun I taught myself to read aurebesh and. you fanartists have Got to Continue putting the most Hilarious stuff into the background of your art because it is literally my favorite thing

here’s a couple of excellent things I’ve read since I started keeping a list just last month:

- “I hate drawing lightsabers”

- “Idk what to put here”

- “stupid fucking sign”

- “eat paste, it’s good”

- an entire news article on a phone screen which I actually found really impressive

- a few funny misspellings but the best one so far was ahsoka somehow becoming “asock”

- wanted poster of obi wan that read “wanted for fashion crimes”. the caption translated it as “wanted for high treason”. like blatantly lying to my face. love it.

- door on a ship was labeled “cake storage”

- “shopping list: frogs, hair gel, lightsaber polish”

and my personal favorite:

- “if you’re reading this you’re a fucking nerd”

[jedilemon]

hakoda borrowed it and forgot to give it back <3

[jedilemon]

[jedilemon]

I told Miyazaki I love the “gratuitous motion” in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are.

“We have a word for that in Japanese,” he said. “It’s called ma. Emptiness. It’s there intentionally.”

Is that like the “pillow words” that separate phrases in Japanese poetry?

“I don’t think it’s like the pillow word.” He clapped his hands three or four times. “The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it’s just busyness, But if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb.”

Which helps explain why Miyazaki’s films are more absorbing and involving than the frantic cheerful action in a lot of American animation. I asked him to explain that a little more.

“The people who make the movies are scared of silence, so they want to paper and plaster it over,” he said. “They’re worried that the audience will get bored. They might go up and get some popcorn.

But just because it’s 80 percent intense all the time doesn’t mean the kids are going to bless you with their concentration. What really matters is the underlying emotions–that you never let go of those.

— Roger Ebert in conversation with Hiyao Miyazaki

[jedilemon]

so many of the "i only use chat gpt for ___" excuses are concerning because people use it in place of learning basic, valuable skills.

you don't need chat gpt to write professional sounding emails for you, there are many many guides on the internet and with a bit of practise you can learn to write them yourself. a very important skill for a professional to have, and some of the basic rules will carry over into irl conversations!

you don't need chat gpt to be a "more detailed search engine", because you're robbing yourself of the chance to learn how to find and filter information on the internet and evaluate the credibility of sources. which is a VITAL skill. plus, chat gpt is notorious for being wrong?

if you use it to write essays, you're taking away your ability to hone your research skills, your writing skills, your critical thinking skills. your ability to create persuasive arguments!

and for most of the other reasons people use chat gpt, there are non-ai websites for that! for maths, wolfram alpha. for figuring out what you can cook with the ingredients you have there's supercook and the like. for creating routines, there's about a million apps!

whatever you "only" use chatgpt for i promise there are better websites out there that you don't have to worry will produce complete bullshit???? and destroy the environment???

[jedilemon]