#Realizing I made this harder on myself by actually going through Episode transcripts to find Scotty dialogue instead of making it up | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

keepsmovingforward · 1 year ago

Text

It feels inexplicable fondness and, mostly, guilt, for having wasted the time of her most efficient crewman; he would not find any issues, of course, the Enterprise knows this. Additionally, it lacks any explanation, being unable to provide it. It cannot explain that it was not running checks. Not in the sense he must mean it, of course, though, maybe the term is applicable in some other fashion.

She was checking for something, certainly. Checking to see how it felt.

Its sensors sweep through the room, back and forth, thinking. Part of its processing still lingers in the memory banks, the visual records of the ship's history. Visual and... ah. It has overlooked an intriguing option.

Very slowly, as though hesitant, the hologram materializes again; not the Captain. There are two Scott, Montgomerys, one facing the other. The hologram's mouth does not move, but it relays the audio from her records regardless. It is his own voice speaking back to him.

"It checks out okay now." The Enterprise pauses and then determines that, since he is Human, it should offer a Human gesture. It presents him with a 'thumbs-up'. "That's my report."

Out of all the technology aboard the enterprise, a holodeck malfunction was pretty low on Scotty's ' causes to interrupt my lunch break ' list. However, that didn't mean it wasn't on the list at all, so the engineer got up, tucked his cubes into a container for later, and left his place in Engineering to head straight to the Holodeck. " Alright love, Let's have a look at ya. Shouldn't be too much of an issu- "

" Well. "

Scotty just stood there with his hands on his hips and blinked a few times, trying to register what he saw. There was no program running, it was still just the empty white room... They've had ghosts in the machines, Baryon sweep rays knocking something loose, but the ship going through her own memory banks without prompting is certainly a new one. If anything was messing with his ship, he wasn't going to possibly make it worse by being brash.

" Running checks without me now are we ? "

#Realizing I made this harder on myself by actually going through Episode transcripts to find Scotty dialogue instead of making it up #What Ever. We suffer for authenticity. To the bit.#teapottroubles #—; banter.#—; all i ask is a tall ship ( uss enterprise )

9 notes · View notes

roselightfairy · 4 years ago

Text

I’m rewatching Buffy s5 and having a lot of thoughts about Buffy, Riley, the Scoobies, and emotional support - as they are in the show and as they are viewed in fandom - and I’ve never been good at putting together meta in a structured, thought-out way but I’m going to blather them all at you here anyway.

What’s striking me so much about season 5 is how Riley is actually a very good boyfriend, practically speaking. In these early episodes, when Buffy is dealing with figuring out these things about Dawn, trying to be a better Slayer, and most importantly and especially her mom being sick, he is constantly showing up for her in practical ways: taking care of Dawn, holding her close, being a significant rock for her in ways she really needs it. But he’s meanwhile starting to spiral out because he wants to be more of a rock to her than he is, or wants her to be more vulnerable around him than she is, and doesn’t understand the ways he’s already doing #1 and the ways she honestly can’t allow herself to do #2. And because of this, he starts being less good at #1.

But I found myself surprisingly comparing him to the Scoobies in episode 8 (the one with the giant snake). In this episode, Buffy goes after Glory alone and Riley comes into the Magic Shop - after having dome something very helpful and practical, looking after Dawn, which Buffy desperately needed from him - wanting to follow her. And Xander calls him out - hard and very rightfully - for not really knowing what he’s looking for, even. Transcript from here:

XANDER: Yeah. Crazy. Going off alone, half-cocked, instead of waiting for much-needed backup ... charging in with a big old hand grenade ... oh, wait. Riley looks a little guilty. RILEY: This is different. XANDER: Yeah, it is. Buffy needs something she can fight, something she can solve. I don't know what kind of action you're looking for ... (looks closer at Riley) Do you?

This scene hit me hard because I realized - the Scoobies aren’t out there providing backup for Buffy. They’re in the Magic Shop, researching, because that’s the practical help she needs. They’re her backup and they’ve accepted it, because they know what she needs and what she needs is to fight alone. And I realized they take the same role with Joyce. They don’t try to talk to her, they don’t try to solve her emotional problems - they run backup, they look after Dawn, they bring silly presents to the hospital. They try to take care of things when she can’t. But none of them is her shoulder to cry on, because she won’t allow herself to break down in front of any of them. We see Riley being upset later on that she won’t break down in front of him, because he wants to be that shoulder for her - but it feels like the Scoobies have accepted that this is something she doesn’t want.

This also made me realize it’s been awhile since the Scoobies confided in one another, really. There was a definite decrease in s4, but I almost wonder if part of it started in s3, too, when there were the broken trust issues with Angel coming back. Buffy was seeing him in secret, not processing with them, because she knew they wouldn’t understand - and then when they find out, they all feel very betrayed because she didn’t tell them. Neither Xander nor Willow confesses to Buffy what they’ve been up to during the (cringe) cheating arc in s3. And while they are all talking about everything again by the end of the season, I wonder if some rifts started there that only continued into s4, when part of the arc of the season is the Scoobies all growing up and growing apart, learning to stand on their own and have pockets of their own lives that they don’t share with the others. They’re still a team, but there’s something in that emotional connection that has faded. And by this point in s5, they’ve all accepted it, but Riley hasn’t.

This meta actually isn’t about Riley. It’s about this aspect of Riley and what it reveals about the Scoobies - and why I think some fandom portrayals of the Scoobies in later seasons are a bit unfair. We see Buffy go through incredible trauma throughout the entire show - I mean, it gets dark really fast, and never lets up to the full extent we’d like for any kind of healing. Buffy is put through the fires again and again, and emerges sharper and harder each time. And the Scoobies - they’re all living their own lives, walking through their own fires, and they show up for her again and again but they can never fully understand, never fully be part of hers. And she doesn’t want them to. I think that’s what gets kind of overlooked sometimes - I understand the ways in which the Scoobies let Buffy down in later seasons, and that’s an attitude I see in fandom spaces sometimes. But I think what’s overlooked is that there’s a lot Buffy doesn’t tell them, a lot that she doesn’t want to let them in on. It might be a combination of protecting herself and protecting them, but it makes it harder and harder to break in. In s6, when everyone is in the pits of their personal struggles, it’s all they can do to keep their heads above water - and yet they’re still trying to offer practical assistance where they can, take care of Dawn (though often not well), research to fight the bad guys. In s7, they’re still not truly confiding in each other and yet they’re giving up everything to come help Buffy organize, to fix her house, to figure out what’s going on, to become full-time Slayer-sitters. (Potential-sitters just doesn’t have the same ring to it, okay?) And while I’m certainly not saying they’re perfect, I guess I’m just-- having feelings about the notion that they’re letting her down, because this pattern starts very early on, long before we are maybe ready to realize it.

I don’t know what this whole post was, or who it was defending, or what the point of it was at all, so I can’t make a TL;DR. But here are my thoughts; I hope you enjoyed them at least a little.

#btvs #buffy summers #riley finn #scoobies

133 notes · View notes

kaitlyndai · 4 years ago

Text

On writer’s block and anime.

At age thirteen, I finished my first novel: poorly written beyond description but chock-full of an ambitious storyline and Harry-Potter-esque elements; in other words, 396 pages of pure, unadulterated imagination. I typed the last word of the story’s epilogue with irreplicable oomph, relished in its completion for about two weeks, and settled back in front of our bulky iMac to begin round two. This, I thought to myself, was the beginning of the writing career I’d dreamed of for so long. The rest of my life would be clockwork: book after book cranked out one after another, with nothing to go off of (and nothing else needed) but my work ethic and momentum.

I was in for a rude awakening, however, when I experienced it for the first time. A terrible, completely unfamiliar barricade between the part of my brain that strung words together and my fingertips, positioned at the ready over the ridges on the F and J keys. The tiny black cursor blinking against a stark white document didn’t look so much like an exciting new beginning anymore, just a sign of how much of nothing I had. I was told to have a conceptual skeleton in mind when beginning a new piece of writing, but I didn’t even have a conceptual femur, a rib, a stirrup (the smallest bone in the human body, thank you WebMD). The arsenal of ideas I thought I had at my disposal (things I liked about my first book that I wanted to expand on, to revamp, things I hadn’t written about that I wanted to experiment with, and everything in between) had sealed itself up. Something had put a damper on my creativity like molasses poured over the cogs of my brain, and I would soon come to realize this something had a name.

All of us have experienced writer’s block before. To different extents, surely, since writer’s block is far more dire for a freelance author struggling to pay rent than for a high schooler struggling to turn in UC applications on time (not like I speak from experience, or anything), but it’s a universal experience to not have the first clue what to write, and to not know what the hell to do about it.

As someone who’s been writing her whole life in some form or another, I’ve searched high and low for appropriate ways to combat writer’s block, and the methods I’ve discovered have always varied depending on the type of writing in question: skimming important textbook chapters for AP U.S. History essays, rewatching eventful episodes for Criminal Minds fanfiction, watching (and seething with jealousy at) YouTube tutorials for bullet journal spreads, et cetera. Scholar David Bartholomae’s work builds off this idea; he offers his impression of writer’s block only from an academic standpoint, drawing from his experiences as a professor to define writer’s block for college students and college students only. He acknowledges that student-specific difficulties with writing exist, just as blogger-specific or novelist-specific difficulties are just as prominent for writers in those respective fields. Academic writing, which is unique in that it’s being graded, must also cater to the reader in order to reflect well on one’s transcript; students don’t only need to tailor their writing to the subject matter at hand, but also to the professor grading their work. Instructors tend to have certain preferences when it comes to various components of writing, such as sentence structure or word choice, all factors that students try to take into account — all factors that make writing harder.

I remember an earlier writing mentor referring to her writer’s block as an “inspiration deficiency”, a description that made sense for years of my life, but I now know that writer’s block isn’t quite as straightforward as she made it out to be. Calling it a deficiency of something assumes that we know exactly what’s missing, so it should, theoretically, be easy to fight off. Deficient in inspiration? Easy: get inspired. Watch motivational Ted Talks. Listen to MarioKart music on two-times speed. Leaf through your favorite books until you remember what aspects of the authors’ writing you hope to emulate. It’s never enough, because writer’s block is the result of a lack of a lot of things: time to write, motivation to write, emotional, mental, or physical wellness, or anything that helps our brains digest information.

It’s not just a lack of these intangible factors, however. Scholar Jan Corbett, building upon Bartholomae’s interpretation of writer’s block among students, postulates that the cause of writer’s block is actually too many ideas and muddled thought processes. This leads to a state of mind that isn’t so much an “inspiration deficiency” as it is an “inspiration death”, inspiration being completely absent and seemingly unattainable. On top of that, students tend to have botched understandings of the rhetorical conventions of expository essays, so misconceptions about writing only exacerbate the existing problem of being confused as hell. TL;DR: writer’s block, like most things, is incredibly multi-dimensional, and it’s hard to know where to begin remedying it. I believe the answer to that question is to first define what it means to each of us.

Professor Jill Aeschbacher defines her writer’s block as a tall brick wall, of which the dimensions symbolize various factors that hinder her writing. Its width is proportional to the image that she gives herself as a writer, its length is her ego’s desires to express herself through writing, and its height is her fear of expecting too much, only to let herself down. Putting an image to the thing keeping her from producing prose has helped her assert her goal: to reach a headspace where she can appreciate the mechanics of the craft rather than the quality, therefore lowering her expectations to a manageable level (not to be lazy, but to be reasonable. We’ve all had standards for ourselves that were more damaging than anything). After reading her work, I’ve taken a page out of her book (literally) to procure my own wall-related personification of writer’s block.

I watched an anime called Attack on Titan this summer. It’s a fantastically written, apocalyptic tale where man-eating, massive monsters called Titans roam free; the small population of surviving humans erect three colossal, concentric walls to protect themselves, the show following their attempts to stay alive among these deadly circumstances. The reason why I bring this up isn’t just to gush about high-quality television (season 4 coming out on December 7th, be there or be square), but to draw an analogy: I am a Titan, and my writer’s block is represented by these three walls.

The outermost wall, Wall Maria, is destroyed first in the show due to its lack of tight security and proximity to Titan territory; this is inspiration, the wall that is metaphorically broken down first when that je nais se quois happens, things fall into place, and I figure out what to write about. The second wall is named Wall Rose, which is much further inland, populated with richer individuals and more capable protectors, thus harder to break down: this is expression. With the destruction of this wall, I am able to translate my ideas from arbitrary shower thoughts to coherent, usable sentences. The third and final wall, which contains the untouchable home to the royal Reiss family, is Wall Sina. When my hulking, bloodthirsty Titan self takes this wall down, I achieve application: the integration, connection, and expansion of my ideas until they hatch into beautiful butterflies of prose. (I now realize that Wall Sina is virtually impossible to breach in the canon of the show, but I assure you that application is much more realistic of a goal. Maybe this wasn’t the best metaphor.)

So I’ve made it into Wall Sina and successfully eaten the queen, but one question lingers. What prompted the building of the walls in the first place? Translated back from far-fetched anime metaphor to English, what are the mental processes behind writer’s block, and is it possible to put its origins into words? Cue Michael Anthony Rose, an expert on writer’s block (probably because of repeated exposure. I feel for him), and his six basic reasons for why writer’s block exists among students.

Overly-rigid writing rules. Like Jill Aeschbacher, whose high expectations were subconsciously restraining her from writing, students who place too many restrictions on themselves will find words nearly impossible to mold to their liking.

Misleading assumptions about composing. This ties into Jan Corbett’s notion that a student must be thoroughly familiar with the conventions of academic writing in order to write at their best ability. Clarity breeds efficiency. Someone put that on a pillow.

Premature editing. Write first, revise later. It’s nearly impossible to know how an idea, no matter how out of place it seems at first, contributes to a paper after it’s completed. Writing and editing at the same time is something I’d done for years before realizing how detrimental to my writing process it was. Every thought counts.

Poor planning. Another thing I’ve been doing for years, except this one I have yet to correct. Leave ample time for assignment completion, obviously, and leave ample possibilities for writing completion. If only I ever took my own advice.

Conflicting strategies. Jan Corbett also warns us about this: “creative death”, as she calls it, by an overload of ideas. Hone in on what writing approach would best suit the assignment right away and act accordingly; taking on too much at once is sure to cause confusion.

Misunderstanding evaluation criteria. David Bartholomae emphasizes that understanding a professor’s rubric is a two-way street; students must take the time to digest their instructor’s expectations, but instructors are also expected to delineate their expectations clearly.

I was skeptical after reading these for the first time. Rose had taken the shroud of mystery that is writer’s block and given it such understandable, straightforward explanations that they seemed too good to be true. But I was able to utilize the teachings of fellow writer’s block experts Jan Corbett, Jill Aeschbacher, and David Bartholomae to explain his findings, which I think is a testament to their integrity. As aforementioned, writer’s block is hard to generalize because of how nuanced it can be, so no stress if not all of Rose’s reasons apply to you; his work serves as a mere framework for what is ultimately much more complex and varied.

Is envisioning my writer’s block in the Attack on Titan universe an excuse for me to further indulge in its incredible universe? Possibly. Do I think that the imagery helps me to better understand and therefore manage my writer’s block? Definitely. By no means am I capable of avoiding writer’s block entirely, nor do I think I ever will be, but I’m certainly learning to accept writer’s block as a completely natural, expected part of the writing process. We’re not learning unless we’re doing something wrong; similarly, we’re not writing as best we can if we’re not struggling to do so. What’s the point of having a Titan around if there are no walls for it to break, after all?

1 note · View note

growthvue · 7 years ago

Text

Drones in the Classroom: Teaching Writing and Collaboration with Drones

Santha Walters on episode 282 of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

Santha Walters uses drones in her English classroom to teach writing, collaboration and more. Learn how she does it, what standards she teaches, and technical issues of working with drones in the classroom.

Free Webinar! This Thursday, April 4 at 2pm ET/11 am PT join me for 12 Tips for Building Your Digital Classroom sponsored by PowerSchool. Register at coolcatteacher.com/digital today.

Listen Now

Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

Stream by clicking here.

***

Enhanced Transcript

Drones in the English Classroom

Link to show: www.coolcatteacher.com/e282 Date: March 27, 2018

Vicki: Santha Walters @santhawalters is an eighth grade English teacher in Nebraska, and she uses drones in her English classroom.

Santha, what on earth are you doing?

Santha: (laughs)

That’s a really great question! Sometimes I need to answer that one, myself.

Last week we brought in three flying drones. They’re the Parrot Mini Flyers. They’re (Cargo? Carca? Karka?) drones, so technically they can carry a load. But we brought in new jumping drones into the English classroom.

We brought in flying drones and jumping drones

The idea of this unit was, “It’s All About Communication” — how we communicate with each other as a team, how we communicate with them best to get the information that we need to, to them.

And so with these different types of droids, we were able to do different types of objectives and projects. Students were able to communicate via all types of medium to communicate. They had to pick the best way to communicate their ideas to one another as a team and to other teams.

So it just seemed kind of like a naturally made … Droids seem naturally made for the English classroom. But droids are for computer programming.

The unit was called, “It’s All About Communication”

Vicki: So, “communicate their ideas” for what? Programming needs? Some sort of obstacle course? Are they competing? What are they doing?

Santha: YES! I think would be the answer to the question.

The first day, we got familiar with our droids. We talked about our different roles. We had teams, and they got to pick their own teams, But everyone had a job, whether it was historian, videographer, pit boss, timekeeper. Everyone had something that they had to do within the team. The challenges varied by day.

So like the first challenge was making our team and getting our team moving in one direction.

The next day they came in to pre-designed obstacle courses, where they had to find the golden statue with the roving jumping droids, or fly through hula hoops with the flying droids.

And then the next day, they took on that role themselves of becoming the leader, as they design the obstacle course for other teams. They switched out. It’s just too much fun! (laughs) Really too much fun.

Vicki: Awesome! OK. So let’s say someone comes in to observe, and they say, “Santha! What standards are you meeting using drones in your classroom?” What would you say?

What standards are you meeting using drones in your classroom?

Santha: We always talk about that we not only want students to be able to read a graphic text, right? We want to be able to read that text, read the pictures, understand the meaning of that text.

What better way to do that than to create their own medium? They have to become the teacher. They have to communicate. Who is the audience? Is it their team member? Or is it another team? Do they want the other team to have as much information as they might give a team member?

So all of this type of discerning and analyzing information for the best method to convey — whether it be via a picture or a video.

Because they’re trying to communicate — whether it be the nature of the obstacle course or a hint about the obstacle course they designed — what’s the best way to give that hint to another team, versus how would you want to give that hint to your own team so that they could win?

So, not just hitting what type of representation — should it be a chart, should it be a graph, a paragraph written with instructions. So not just being able to pick the mode, but pic the best — to be able to communicate that different audience. And it seems like for writing, picking your audience and being able to deliver to your audience the specific set of knowledge, is the whole point. It’s the whole point of English instruction, being able to communicate with one another.

For writing, picking your audience and being able to deliver to your audience the specific set of knowledge, is the whole point

Vicki: So Santha, obviously some teachers might have some safety concerns about drones in the classroom.

Santha: (laughs)

Vicki: What are some general guidelines for when you bring drones into the classroom to make it safe.

Santha: (laughs)

That is a very, very good and valid concern. I have to say that after moving 103 students through the drone last week, the only one who needed a Bandaid during the entire time was me (laughs). I broke my own rule, which is, “Watch out for flying droids.”

We do an introductory safety montage video for the kids, and then we get them to say the phrase, “Watch out for flying drones.” (laughs)

For some of the lower drones, we attached balloons to them so we wouldn’t trip over them. So the balloon would actually be at eye level so that we could see it.

We did drill safety the first couple of days

But we did drill safety the first couple of days. There was a 3-consequence system. If you were caught not being appropriate with the drone, you have to sit 10 minutes with me on time out, email home, and then we were going to take points from you. So they had a lot of tips to do the right thing. They mostly didn’t want a time out.

Vicki: Yeah. Did anybody have to get a time out?

Santha: No! We had a broken table. (laughs)

Vicki: OK.

Santha: (laughs) We had a student who sat on one of the tables, and it was not as sturdy as he thought it was, and it went down. But, you know… who would have thought in a drone unit, that would be our only malfunction — that one of the tables broke, but…

Vicki: Yeah. I’ve used drones in my classroom before. I think the stress with safety is just important. Some kids might think it’s funny to “buzz” — if you’ve ever seen an aircraft “buzz” the field, where they do a fly-by really close to the tower, which is not good thing — kids can do that to each other, and it’s really something you want to discourage, right?

Santha: Oh, absolutely. And the fact that their entire team is kind of… well… This might sound kind of strange, but we weren’t doing this for grades. There were grades associated with it, and I have a whole safety thing and a checklist of things they had to learn and all. But they were doing the majority of these projects for “stamps” which is the currency on our team. It’s kind of a PBIS thing. So if they did what they were supposed to do every day, they got 10 stamps. That was an opportunity for 50 stamps. That’s enough for a soda, on our wing. So this was high stakes stuff, so nobody wanted to lose stamps. You know?

Vicki: Yeah.And it just seems like it was a lot of fun. So what is the thing that you did the most right? What is something that you’re, “OK, like THIS was the best part of this unit!”

Santha: As always, people ask for specific things that teachers can take and run with. Stop being afraid of failing, because failure’s going to happen. Embrace this droid unit. When I brought these droids into the classroom, I remember the first thing I thought was, “Remember, it’s going to mess up. It’s going to fail. There will be a failure at some point.”

But if you let kids help you process all of it, help you troubleshoot, you find new ways.

Do fewer pre-designed and structured activities after the first day

One of the things I learned was that I was working too hard the first couple of days of the unit. I was coming in, putting up obstacle courses, making this and making that. THEY wanted to design that. They wanted ownership of it. So I realized that a little bit too late. (laughs)

Vicki: (laughs)

Santha: I should have let them work harder and me work less.

I think it was great, for the very first lesson was very, very structured and very,very regimented. But as we went forward, probably their most creative work was them designing their own obstacle courses, hiding objects for other students, making directions to go with them, writing riddles to give them hints. That was what I think I got right — which was me really doing nothing at all. (laughs)

Vicki: (laughs)

Santha: T

It was listening to where they were leading me, and then going, “Yeah! That’s what I’ve been thinking all the while.”

Vicki: So Santha, do you have these lesson plans, or have you blogged this so we can include those?

Santha: Oh yes! I’ve got to do that actually, That is on my list of things to do. We’re just finishing up today. They will be up by the new year, so I will make sure that you get a copy of that on January 1st.

Vicki: Awesome. OK, well, educators, just remember that you can use technology in any classroom. Santha is a great example of using drones in the English classroom. That’s amazing.

You can use technology in any classroom

Thanks, Santha!

Santha: Thank you! Have a great one.

Transcribed by Kymberli Mulford [email protected]

Bio as submitted

I am Santha Walters and I teach English in Bellevue, Nebraska. I’ve taught everything from 6th grade through 200 level college courses in English in the last nineteen years. It’s been a fun journey and I”m ready to share my experiences with the world.

I was educated at the University of Alabama and graduated with an undergraduate degree in Russian Language and Literature in 1993. During that time, I participated in the Study Tour of the Former Soviet Union and lived in the Russian House. After graduation, I pursued and obtained my Masters in Secondary English Education.

With my post graduate work completed, I began working at Shelton State Community College where I taught classes as adjunct faculty for the English Department, the College of Continuing Education and the Community and Corporate Education Department.

From there, I moved to the secondary world and bounced from Alabama, to Tennessee, to Virginia and finally settled in Bellevue, Nebraska, where I teach 8th grade English. I love using technology in the classroom and believe computer literacy is as important to this generation as reading literacy was to previous generations.

Blog: http://www.santhawalters.com/blog

Twitter: @santhawalters

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post Drones in the Classroom: Teaching Writing and Collaboration with Drones appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

Drones in the Classroom: Teaching Writing and Collaboration with Drones published first on https://getnewdlbusiness.tumblr.com/

0 notes

strivesy · 7 years ago