#Thanks for educating me

[gael-garcia]

Gael García Bernal in La mala educación (2004)

[bacchuschucklefuck]

class swap design masterpost for convenience (from top to bottom: bard!riz, cleric!gorgug, sorcerer!kristen, barbarian!fig, artificer!adaine, and rogue!fabian)

[that-stupid-lamb]

I dont think we in the twilight renaissance bring up Bella being a heavy metal enjoyer enough.

I have this vivid image of bella dragging edward to their concert and him white knuckling the whole time because this isn’t debussy

Edit: OK I GET IT THIS IS LINKON PARK NOT METAL IN ALL Y’ALL’S EYES I HAVE NOT READ THESE IN A DECADE I WAS JUST GOING FROM THE TEXT ON PAGE OK.

[metanarrates]

Hello. Sorry if this a stupid question u can ignore if u want.

How can someone get better at media analysis? Besides obviously reading a lot.

Im asking this bc im in a point where im aware of my own lack of tools to analyze stories, but i don't know where to get them or how to get better in general. How did you learn to analyze media? There's any specific book, essay, author, etc that you recommend? Somewhere to start?

I'm asking you because you are genuinely the person who has the best takes on this site. Thank you for you work!

it sounds like a cop-out answer but it's always felt like a skill I acquired mostly thru reading a ton, and by paying a lot of attention in high school literature classes. because of that I can't promise that I'm necessarily equipped to be a good teacher or that i know good resources. HOWEVER! let me run some potential advice to you based on the shit i get a lot of mileage out of

first off, a lot of literary analysis is about pattern recognition! not just pattern recognition in-text, but out-of-text as well. how does this work relate to its genre? real-world history? does it have parallels between real-life situations? that kind of thing.

which is a big concept to just describe off the bat, so let me break it down further!

in literature, there is the concept of something called literary devices - they are some of the basic building blocks in how a story is delivered mechanically and via subtext. have you ever heard of a motif? that is a literary device. it's a pattern established in the text in order to further the storytelling! and here is a list of a ton of common literary devices - I'd recommend reading the article. it breaks down a lot of commonly used ones in prose and poetry and explains their usage.

personally, I don't find all the literary devices I've learned about in school to be the most useful to my analytical hobbies online. motifs, themes, and metaphors are useful and dissecting them can bring a lot to the table, but a lot of other devices are mostly like fun bonus trivia for me to notice when reading. however, memorizing those terms and trying to notice them in the things you read does have a distinct benefit - it encourages you to start noticing patterns, and to start thinking of the mechanical way a story is built. sure, thinking about how the prose is constructed might not help you understand the story much more, but it does make you start thinking about how things like prose contribute to the greater feeling of a piece, or how the formatting of a piece contributes to its overall narrative. you'll start developing this habit of picking out little things about a text, which is useful.

other forms of in-text pattern recognition can be about things like characterization! how does a character react to a certain situation? is it consistent with how they usually behave? what might that tell you about how they think? do they have tells that show when they're not being trustworthy? does their viewpoint always match what is happening on screen? what ideas do they have about how the world works? how are they influenced by other people in their lives? by social contexts that might exist? by situations that have affected them? (on that note, how do situations affect other situations?)

another one is just straight-up noticing themes in a work. is there a certain idea that keeps getting brought up? what is the work trying to say about that idea? if it's being brought up often, it's probably worth paying attention to!

that goes for any pattern, actually. if you notice something, it's worth thinking about why it might be there. try considering things like potential subtext, or what a technique might be trying to convey to a reader. even if you can't explain why every element of a text is there, you'll often gain something by trying to think about why something exists in a story.

^ sometimes the answer to that question is not always "because it's intentional" or even "because it was a good choice for the storytelling." authors frequently make choices that suck shit (I am a known complainer about choices that suck shit.) that's also worth thinking about. english classes won't encourage this line of thinking, because they're trying to get you to approach texts with intentional thought instead of writing them off. I appreciate that goal, genuinely, but I do think it hampers people's enthusiasm for analysis if they're not also being encouraged to analyze why they think something doesn't work well in a story. sometimes something sucks and it makes new students mad if they're not allowed to talk about it sucking! I'll get into that later - knowing how and why something doesn't work is also a valuable skill. being an informed and analytical hater will get you far in life.

so that's in-work literary analysis. id also recommend annotating your pages/pdfs or keeping a notebook if you want to close-read a work. keeping track of your thoughts while reading even if they're not "clever" or whatever encourages you to pay attention to a text and to draw patterns. it's very useful!

now, for out-of-work literary analysis! it's worth synthesizing something within its context. what social settings did this work come from? was it commenting on something in real life? is it responding to some aspects of history or current events? how does it relate to its genre? does it deviate from genre trends, commentate on them, or overall conform to its genre? where did the literary techniques it's using come from - does it have any big stylistic influences? is it referencing any other texts?

and if you don't know the answer to a bunch of these questions and want to know, RESEARCH IS YOUR FRIEND! look up historical events and social movements if you're reading a work from a place or time you're not familiar with. if you don't know much about a genre, look into what are considered common genre elements! see if you can find anyone talking about artistic movements, or read the texts that a work might be referencing! all of these things will give you a far more holistic view of a work.

as for your own personal reaction to & understanding of a work... so I've given the advice before that it's good to think about your own personal reactions to a story, and what you enjoy or dislike about it. while this is true that a lot of this is a baseline jumping-off point on how I personally conduct analysis, it's incomplete advice. you should not just be thinking about what you enjoy or dislike - you should also be thinking about why it works or doesn't work for you. if you've gotten a better grasp on story mechanics by practicing the types of pattern recognition i recognized above, you can start digging into how those storytelling techniques have affected you. did you enjoy this part of a story? what made it work well? what techniques built tension, or delivered well on conflict? what about if you thought it sucked? what aspects of storytelling might have failed?

sometimes the answer to this is highly subjective and personal. I'm slightly romance-averse because I am aromantic, so a lot of romance plots will simply bore me or actively annoy me. I try not to let that personal taste factor too much into serious critiques, though of course I will talk about why I find something boring and lament it wasn't done better lol. we're only human. just be aware of those personal taste quirks and factor them into analysis because it will help you be a bit more objective lol

but if it's not fully influenced by personal taste, you should get in the habit of building little theses about why a story affected you in a certain way. for example, "I felt bored and tired at this point in a plot, which may be due to poor pacing & handling of conflict." or "I felt excited at this point in the plot, because established tensions continued to get more complex and captured my interest." or "I liked this plot point because it iterated on an established theme in a way that brought interesting angles to how the story handled the theme." again, it's just a good way to think about how and why storytelling functions.

uh let's see what else. analysis is a collaborative activity! you can learn a lot from seeing how other people analyze! if you enjoy something a lot, try looking into scholarly articles on it, or youtube videos, or essays online! develop opinions also about how THOSE articles and essays etc conduct analysis, and why you might think those analyses are correct or incorrect! sometimes analyses suck shit and developing a counterargument will help you think harder about the topic in question! think about audience reactions and how those are created by the text! talk to friends! send asks to meta blogs you really like maybe sometimes

find angles of analysis that interest and excite you! if you're interested in feminist lenses on a work, or racial lenses, or philosophical lenses, look into how people conduct those sort of analyses on other works. (eg. search feminist analysis of hamlet, or something similar so you can learn how that style of analysis generally functions) and then try applying those lenses to the story you're looking at. a lot of analysts have a toolkit of lenses they tend to cycle through when approaching a new text - it might not be a bad idea to acquire a few favored lenses of your own.

also, most of my advice is literary advice, since you can broadly apply many skills you learn in literary analysis to any other form of storytelling, but if you're looking at another medium, like a game or cartoon, maybe look up some stuff about things like ludonarrative storytelling or visual storytelling! familiarizing yourself with the specific techniques common to a certain medium will only help you get better at understanding what you're seeing.

above all else, approach everything with intellectual curiosity and sincerity. even if you're sincerely curious about why something sucks, letting yourself gain information and potentially learning something new or being humbled in the process will help you grow. it's okay to not have all the answers, or to just be flat-out wrong sometimes. continuing to practice is a valuable intellectual pursuit even if it can mean feeling a tad stupid sometimes. don't be scared to ask questions. get comfortable sometimes with the fact that the answer you'll arrive at after a lot of thought and effort will be "I don't fully know." sometimes you don't know and that can be valuable in its own right!

thank you for the ask, and I hope you find this helpful!

[deathon1leg]

byler & yellow curtains (inspired by this incredible post by @love-byers)

i wanted to contribute some of my own findings (which i’m sure have all been pointed out before—i’m no genius discoverer) and personal analysis!!

this post got way longer than i thought it would, but i kept noticing more things to talk about. it’ll be s4 focused but i have some from other seasons too if anyone’s interested in another post :)

mike and el’s fight:

outside of el’s room you can see yellow/orange curtains through jonathan’s door, and some of el’s window through hers. when mike goes in, the window is the brightest and most vibrant thing by far and its curtains are WIDE open. when he goes to put a plate down the left curtain is almost perfectly between them, dividing them like a wall.

at first she doesn’t look at him, so only we (and not mike) get to see her face, which is cast in light and a bit out of focus. (also, the yellow-green tree she’s putting back together for her diorama is peaking out in the corner.)

the bottom two pics are el’s POV, hence the blurry background mike—she feels disconnected from/misunderstood by him.

when she finally turns around is when she’s talking about being different and not belonging anywhere (which, while in an entirely different way, mike can relate to). the light hardly hits her face anymore because it’s shifted to mike’s POV. he sees her in shadow.

the next time we get a full shot of the window is when el says mike can’t even write “i love you”, when she stands in front of it and it frames her.

i wanna point out mike’s face here. he looks so—guilty? afraid? vulnerable? just more genuine than he does the rest of the fight. he knows he’s been caught, and he doesn’t have an excuse (which is why he ends up deflecting and calling her ridiculous)

when el grabs the letters, the window is between them, separating them, and a curtain is directly behind her. also, she says “from mike” or “from” a total of 7 times. coincidence? idk. maybe i’m reaching.

the window/curtains take up a whole half of el’s shot here, and are still “between” them in continuity—it’s as if they’re another character interrupting the shot, just like will did many times in s4 m*leven scenes.

a few lines before “they’re nobodies and you’re a superhero” mike says “you know what i think of you, you’re the most incredible person in the world”. it comes across as ‘i think you’re the most incredible person because you’re a superhero’.

i think el’s “not anymore” is a response both to “you’re a superhero” and the “you know what i think of you”, because this is when she comes to the conclusion that mike doesn’t see her as the most incredible person anymore, and that mike loved her powers/his idea of her rather than her as a person (i do believe mike cares for her a ton and loves her as a friend, but this is el’s perspective) .

her expression changes as she realizes these things, and mike can tell he didn’t convince her.

mike’s talk w/ will about his and el’s fight:

will paces back and forth in front of the yellow/orangeish curtained window in jonathan’s room, venting about everything. it’s not actually a curtain but a sheet/tapestry, so it doesn’t do much at all to block the bright light. (note the bright lava lamp, too.) mike’s not really listening, and is instead staring at the note el left: Dear Mike, I have gone to become a superhero again. From, El

mike knows what el’s saying here. ‘superhero’ = a version of herself that mike can love again, and ‘from, el’ = her acknowledging he doesn’t love her (again, el’s pov) OR implying she doesn’t love him anymore, either. imo it’s a coded breakup/pre-breakup.

this is preoccupying his mind enough that he’s not paying attention to will talking about the very serious situation they’re in.

the note is a symbol of mike’s lack of romantic feelings for el, which lead to the deeper truth of his true romantic feelings for will. with that in mind, here’s what will says when it cuts away from mike looking at the note:

i audibly gasped when the cogs turned in my brain while collecting these screenshots

textually, he’s talking about hawkins here, but COME ON. if we read between the lines…

imagine will’s rhetorical “you” is actually directed at mike—which is easy to do since he’s the only other person in the room—who’s currently staring at the symbolic note.

the thing that needs to be kept contained is mike’s feelings for will, which cannot be contained at all without el. she’s his cover, his beard, his excuse to not face what he’s trying to suppress.

the window appears even brighter when the camera focuses on will.

after this, mike absentmindedly responds with “yeah,” and will notices how distracted mike is, saying:

AKA, if you keep ruminating on your feelings they’re not gonna change, you know?

so, he crumples up the note and throws it in the trash.

this means one of two things: 1. he’s choosing to continue to ignore and “get rid of” his real feelings, or 2. he’s accepting that his feelings won’t change, and is gonna stop trying to get rid of them.

considering the wide open door/‘closet’ behind him, the poorly concealed window, and the “i didn’t say it” “you didn’t have to” scene that comes later (‘it’ being ‘i love you’, as established here, and this convo being coded as also about mike and will’s fight)… i’d bet on option 2. then again, contradictory things happen later, so it may be a mix of both 1 and 2.

a single proper ray of light is peaking through the window, and it’s landing right on a green (blue+yellow, but you knew that) chair, pointing towards them.

even though they’re talking about mike and el’s struggles, will is in the forefront of this shot. he’s lit up by the window’s light, and even though mike doesn’t see that side of his face i believe it’s from mike’s pov.

note the red (el’s color) lamp by will’s head signifying that he think the convo’s just about her, and the yellow potted plant below it that the lamp would be shining on if it were on. (also note the upside down cross next to mike, showing that he feels his feelings for will are “blasphemous”.)

suzie’s room:

this one’s one of my favorites. after eden tells them where suzie is she says “make sure to give that selfish little four-eyed shit a nice little shove for me”. they get to her room but she’s not there.

mike’s, in the front, is first to notice the window, which has open yellow curtains w/ blue trim. the window itself is open, with a gentle breeze and birdsong flowing through it as delicate music plays.

it continues to zoom in on mike as he says this. the door’s open behind him. for some reason or another we’re supposed to focus on mike’s reaction to the window.

“give ‘her’ a shove” as in shove ‘her’ out the window—it’s open, it’s beautiful, it’s calling out to mike, he just needs a shove. and whaddaya know, in the next shot…

mike was the first to stick his head out the window, and is still in the forefront. the sun gets in his eyes and he squints and dodges it a few times, but then he smiles. he doesn’t regret it.

and just ‘cause, here’s another shot where mike and will are perfectly framed by suzie’s yellow-beige curtains:

mike and will talk about el and vecna:

in the top one, they each have a window behind them again. the whole house is filled with windows (w/ open yellowish curtains or shades) and just straight up holes in the wall, and unobscured sun rays come through practically every one of them.

the little curtains in the top left are green-ish and look blue from afar. here, sunshine pours onto will, and mike is exactly right outside of the ray—look at his arm and shoe.

will explains that he can still feel vecna’s presence and that they need to kill him. with (yet again) yellow curtains behind him, mike says:

he crosses the distance and puts his hand on will’s shoulder, and the light hits it.

mike’s in the light now—his arm, at the very least. he reached out into it with intent, giving himself a shove, and now they’re sharing the same ray of sunshine. when they hear a car approaching they look behind themselves at the window, acknowledging it, and then they get up to look outside it.

aaaaand that’s it. i hope you enjoyed this post <3 i spent way too much time on it… disclaimer that i have no media education and this is all from my (untrained) perspective. i also don’t claim to be the first to discover any of this, i’m sure i’m late to the party for a lot of things here, so kudos to those more attentive than me. thanks for reading!! :)

[sahaminiloki]

What I need in my life is a samurai, that's you

[faeriefully]

what do you MEAN American public schools don’t teach what a verb’s aspect is??? what do you MEAN they expect all students to take foreign language classes without teaching them the foundations of their own language?!?!? what do you MEAN you want to address literacy without providing a deep education of descriptive grammar usage they already subconsciously use!?!?!?!? WHAT DO YOU MEAN!???

[flowercrown-bard]

To all the aros and aces and aroaces, you're wonderful and valid and you don't have to prove to anyone that you're "queer enough"

[screamingcrows]

HAPPY WEBBY WEDNESDAY

[almost-radqueer]

"so glad to have seen the additions" THANK YOU I'M SORRY I'M STUPID AND BAD AT EXPLICITLY SAYING WHICH ONE

Right I might as well coin this

ALMOST RADQUEER

For when someone technically counts as radqueer but because they don't support absolutely EVERYTHING (like in my case, thinking pedos zoophiles and necrophiles are horrible) or thinks some things can (IN VERY FEW CASES) get a bit iffy and sometimes disrespectful (like I think that way about transrace and transabled) and thus wishes to disconnect themselves from the radqueer community.

Meanings behind the flag: Honestly not much, I just inverted the colours of the radqueer flag, added some green outlines, and removed blue from the flag to represent that we don't support EVERYTHING (why specifically blue? Idk it's my least favorite color I just wanted to remove a colour)

Also after this post I will stop using the main radqueer tags, just "almost radqueer" and "almost rq"

Tagging this with radqueer tags so it reaches more people

[mossadspypigeon]

If your only takeaway from the holocaust is that it was bad because it negatively affected YOUR people, and everyone else who was targeted has to wait in line for their voices to be heard, youre showing everybody your asscrack.

Ethnic cleansing, is evil, and it would STILL BE EVIL even if you weren't a primary target.

Nobody's fucking denying that the Jewish people weren't Germanys scapegoat, that it wasn't horrific for practicing and nonpracticing jews (nobody who isn't a denier, and really, you think they read your blog?) And expect everyone else to listen to your voice in particular against a movement of antisemitism, white supremacy, queerphobia, eugenics, anti-intellectualism misogynistic, imperialism and authoritarian rule, when you dont even care enough about your own rights as a lesbian to criticize Israeli trans/homophobia, so forgive the rest of us for not believing you stand for ANYTHING that doesn't further your own complacency and comfort.

All that is to say, I could never speak on behalf of the Jewish community. And in spite of your inflated ego, thankfully, you can't either!

[mallgothchloe97]

That makes sense and I get that❤️

Thanks for let me know❤️

You learn something new everyday.

I am not trans so I personally don’t know what its like but I do my best to educate myself so I appreciate you letting me know❤️🏳️‍⚧️

“"men dni except for trans guys" you don't see us as real men!”

No, i hate all men except trans guys because trans guys have experienced misogyny and are victims of the patriarchy, NOT because i dont see trans guys as men!

Cis men are monsters compared to trans men!

Also, i find it so odd that some trans men get a euphoria kick out of being grouped in with misogynists.

Think about that.

[another-goblin]

A redraw of that scene from the trailer (sort of)

[hiding-under-the-willow]

obsessed with ancient/stone age human culture (would have gone on to study it if life hadnt gotten in the way) and so your ghosts au bdubs has me chomping at the bit. what a brilliant and wonderful choice. i dont have a lot of coherent thoughts rn but i love love love the tags in the og post of your recent fanart of him and i hope to see more of him and i love to turn him around in my brain. & wanted to tell you that.

i also think sometimes about how long he spent alone in death before any of the other ghosts joined him and oh, my goodness. how, uh,, how do you think he's doing?

Ghosts AU Bdubs is so interesting to me bc I came in at the beginning mostly just basing him on the portrayal of Robin from the show, which I knew wasn't entirely historically accurate in the first place so I would probably want to go more in depth with him at some point, but I just hadn't taken the time to do the research necessary to actually go through with that development, and then this semester half of my classes these last few weeks have been discussing Paleolithic and Neolithic people and art and something just snapped in my brain and I was like. Ah. Okay. The potential there is crazy actually. So there'll definitely be more of him!! I'm like half using him as an excuse to explore the stuff I learned in my classes more in depth and half using the fact that I learned about this stuff in my classes as an excuse to finally go through and develop him the way I wanted. Symbiotic relationship or whatever.

Also yeah, that long ass gap of time where he was the only ghost around certainly has been bouncing around in my head a bit. I don't have. completely coherent thoughts about it at the moment. I certainly think he might've coped in similar ways to the way Robin does in the show, getting attached to the people living on the property, spending a lot of his time learning from them and talking to them even if they don't realize he's there. I think he probably would've been a much more serious figure in life, and also in the early days of his afterlife (I mean not completely, it's still Bdubs we're talking about lol, but still), that spending all that time alone might've unraveled him a bit. I feel like it's hard to get a definitive grip on like. Who he is. Some days he's kind of obsessive and neurotic, in everyone's business, easily worked up, other days he seems perfectly content to ignore the happenings of the house, just do his own thing out on the property. I feel like most of the other ghosts wouldn't know much about his life, or even his early afterlife, he doesn't talk about it much and when he does it's always some crazy one-off anecdote that doesn't let you in on much of what was actually happening at the time. I think, like Robin in the show, he probably has his moments of like complex emotional or social intelligence that seem kind of out of nowhere from an outside perspective until you think about how long he's been around to have observed and learned about the world, about people.

[ballad-of-the-lamb]

happy pride month only to people who can describe their gender as a despondent 1700s-1800s pauper who has witnessed the horrific depravity of humanity all of their life and in their final moments decided that in a pact with a dead forgotten god that they will be the cleansing that the world needs to heal, history will make them a villain, but they will have no other suffer the same fate that they did

[saetoru]

and for the record this is in fact something that could be argued as anti muslim or at least holding some form of bias against muslims.

why should it be a crime for muslim people to explore sexuality? just because i am muslim doesn’t mean that i dont have sexual desires just as any human would. its dehumanizing to deny me of my very human and very normal desires. what does religion have to do with exploring sex in a creative outlet? what you’re effectively saying here is that muslim people should not be allowed the same creative freedom as non muslim people and if they do, you are judging them for it. there are other religions that hold the same principles regarding sex outside of islam, and this is exactly the type of rhetoric that silences and discourages muslim people from being able to explore their identities. and regardless of being a sin or not, who are you to police an individuals journey in their religious connection? very odd indeed