#fortunatelychaoticphantom

[qqueenofhades]

On the subject of academia... I'm doing my MA now, and just got back a grade for a seminar. It was the most bizarre thing - on the one hand I got 100 on it, but on the other hand my professor basically said my writing is embarrassingly amateur and unprofessional. I couldn't even finish reading his notes. I'll have to go over them when I can handle it better. It just feels like a never ending battle, and with each step I take to better myself academically, I get punched in the face like lol you are a small ignorant child why are you even here? Constantly conflicted about my love of studying and writing and wanting to just get the hell out of there...

See, part of this can be, as in this case, professors who are just kind of bad at their jobs. You can commiserate with your peers via text (or, uh, on your Tumblr blog) or be like "NO" to yourself or whatever, but there's really no point in that kind of blunt-force negative comment being made directly to a student. You are a STUDENT; of course your writing is amateur and not yet to the level of perfect polish! I can guarantee that I wouldn't be able to read my old undergraduate papers and possibly even my master's thesis without dying of embarrassment, but that's the point: I learned, I repeated, I improved with work, and fortunately I never had a professor tell me that sort of thing to my face. Maybe they thought it, I don't know, but still.

Giving honest critique is one thing, but being a dick just to be a dick and flex on someone who obviously has less experience and work in the subject than you do, and is looking to you to help guide that process, is not cool. If your professor thought that your writing needed work, what he SHOULD have done is compliment you for the high grade (after all, you got a 100!) and then suggest that you take advantage of resources, i.e. the university writing center, to help continue to polish your prose. That is a helpful and not-dickish way to point you toward taking the next step and to not make it into a personal attack. You know, HIS ACTUAL JOB, rather than leaving you feeling so disheartened that you struggle to finish reading the rest of his feedback and wonder if you even want to continue investing this level of effort into it.

Anyway, academics who are bad at their jobs -- because teaching is just as important as research, and plenty of them struggle to make that distinction and/or understand exactly what they're supposed to be doing there -- grind my gears, so yes. Sympathies.

[kosher-salt]

@fortunatelychaoticphantom @homochadensistm @digging-time-w-kaz

Hey Jumblr archeology gang, I'm making my Jewish bookshelf, as a baby archeologist. Was wondering if we had any thoughts on these titles?

The Goddess and the Bull by Balter, Michael

The Source by Michener, James

I was gifted these books but would like to understand if there's some consensus I should be aware of before I read.

[musingsofahistorymajor]

Hi! I'm studying for a diploma in critical curatorship and museology, and I'm looking for some good books or articles about curating practices in museums of history, both in general and specifically about curating temporary exhibitions (I hope that's the term in English). If there's something about incorporating art (both new and "old"- that is, from the period of the topic of the exhibition) in historical exhibitions that would be great as well

Hi sorry for the delay in my response. Life kicked me in the face. So I have a few things you can check out and I also asked some of my fellow museum professionals for their opinions and this is what I’ve got for you. These are mostly books about general museum curatorship practices but should hopefully be helpful for you. If I stumble upon anything more specific about temporary exhibits or including art later I’ll reblog this post and add it so you can see it.

Museum Registration Methods, 5th edition edited by Rebecca Buck and Jean A Gilmore (has basically been my bible at school)

Dinosaurs and Dioramas, 1st edition by Sarah J. Chicone (she’s one of my professors and she’s awesome)

Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach

The Objects of Experience by Elee Wood and Kiersten Latham

Creating Exhibitions: Collaboration in the Planning, Development, and Design of Innovative Experiences, 1st edition by Polly McKenna-Cress and Janet Kamien

Manual of Museum Exhibitions, second edition, by Barry Lord

Manual of Museum Planning: Sustainable Space, Facilities, and Operations, 3rd edition by Barry Lord

Making Museums Matter by Stephen Weil. (not exactly on curatorship practices but his work has been very helpful to me and I’ve enjoyed reading his essays)

Museum Basics (Heritage: Care-Preservation-Management) 3rd edition, by Timothy Ambrose and Crispin Paine

A friend also recommended you check out anything related to the Oakland Museum of California because they recently went to the San Francisco seminar and did a bunch of talks/lectures about this.

I hope something here is helpful!! And if anyone seeing this has recommendations please share cause I want to read them too!

[ao3feed-batb2017]

Not Like Other Girls

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2OmbI7C

by Fortunatelychaoticphantom

They are always together, near indistinguishable. Silly girls with frill dresses, always fawning over him. Right?

Beauty and the Beast retold from a revamped POV of the three Bimbettes, without the suffocating misogyny.

Words: 3440, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Beauty and the Beast (2017)

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Gen

Characters: Bimbettes (Disney), Belle (Disney), LeFou (Disney), Gaston (Disney), Maurice (Disney), Beast (Disney)

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2OmbI7C

[fortunatelychaoticphantom]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Beauty and the Beast (2017) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Bimbettes (Disney), Belle (Disney), LeFou (Disney), Gaston (Disney), Maurice (Disney), Beast (Disney) Summary:

They are always together, near indistinguishable. Silly girls with frill dresses, always fawning over him. Right?

Beauty and the Beast retold from a revamped POV of the three Bimbettes, without the suffocating misogyny.

—

This is my first try at fanfic writing. It’s a one-shot inspired by @pinkwitchfairy ‘s post about the portrayal of the Bimbettes in the live action version of Beauty and the Beast.

[eskalations]

So, I can’t remember exactly where I pulled this text from since I posted this in what had to be 2013-2014 - HOWEVER, I do remember all of this being said in the Book 2 Commentary (which I did watch) and it being almost exactly what was said!

@fortunatelychaoticphantom

from the book 2 commentary: clarification of aang’s role as a father

[qqueenofhades]

I don't know if you've seen it, but I just saw Trevor Noah's monologue about RvW, and I am so angry right now, and I'm not even from the US. He has a huge platform and influence, to the point where things he said on the show were quoted by protesters back in the BLM protests. Usually he says incredible things, but he just went on a rant on how the democrats in power "haven't done anything" to stop this and to protect the right for abortions and that basically we shouldn't donate to democratic nominees anymore before they show us proof of their success, and the crowd cheered so hard. And i'm just. So fucking angry. That's NOT how politics work and saying this the way he did is actively harming the cause. Sorry, I just had to rant, and it felt like you would understand my frustration.

Ugh. I haven't seen it, but that is, as you point out, deeply disappointing, since Noah is a respected political commentator with a large audience and a considerable platform to influence the debate. I would think that he's definitely one of the people who knows better, and is just mobilising the misdirected anger at the Democrats to get quick likes and kudos, which a lot of other irresponsible clout chasers are doing; someone like him should do better than that. Or he genuinely feels that this is the case, in which event then he needs to sit down and think about the whole situation a lot harder.

I am all for pressuring Democratic elected officials, especially those who currently do hold all three branches of Congress/the executive, to DO MORE in response to this. But withholding fundraising or punishing them for the decision itself, rather than trying to help them respond effectively to the aftermath, is beyond asinine. There is literally nothing that anyone in the American government, apart from the Supreme Court itself, can do to stop or overrule its decisions. The fact that the opinion even leaked ahead of time was utterly unprecedented and triggered a furious witch hunt among the court insiders. Otherwise we would have just been dropped with it like a bomb out of the clear blue sky and that would be it. We would have had no forewarning, even though people like me and a lot of other politically plugged-in people were warning that it was coming. This is the result of the bad-faith, extremist right-wing, nakedly partisan Court we were stuck with as a result of the Trump presidency. Anything else is straight up and disingenuous disinformation.

People like AOC are shouting at the Democrats to "restrain judicial review," as if this is the Democrats' fault for not preventing SCOTUS from carrying out the function appointed to it by the Constitution. The fact that SCOTUS did its job is not the issue; the fact is that SCOTUS was staffed with terrible personnel by a terrible president and a terrible Senate majority leader, that this was a direct result of their win in a terrible election in 2016, and if you can't or won't draw that distinction, you don't have any business commenting on American politics right now. If Hillary had become president and appointed 2 or 3 SCOTUS justices, this would never have happened, we would have a liberal majority on the court for the next generation, and all the damage of the Trump years would have been avoided. Alas, you kinder timeline. I want to live there so bad.

American democracy is not designed to guard against a personal, evil, deliberate, wide-ranging bad actor like Trump. As long as he occupied the office, he was entitled to exercise its prerogatives, however terribly and corruptly he did so. People like me warned throughout the 2016 campaign season that even aside from being the worst human being alive, he would be able to fill likely multiple SCOTUS seats with the help of an increasingly reactionary and fascist Republican party. Once again, that is exactly what happened. There is a direct line from A to B to C. It's not a mystery or some nebulous clusterfuck where Both Sides To Blame!!! We know exactly what happened in this specific instance, and how. It's really discouraging to see people whitewashing it so thoroughly in their psychotic quest to blame the Democrats for everything. If you don't remember what happened only six fucking years ago, there's no way you can ever muster a coherent response to the actual situation, rather than yelling slogans and blaming the wrong people and continuing to make everything worse.

Anyway. As I said, this is deeply disappointing, especially from someone with such a platform/influence. So the Republicans took away Roe, and we should... punish the Democrats for it, take away their ability to effectively respond, and make it more likely that the Republicans will win actual elected office as a result. Sure. Seems entirely smart and logical and progressive. Or, you know. Not.

[qqueenofhades]

I feel the pain of overflowing bookshelves. But the fear that if I wait too long the books I want to read will get that un-removeable "now a hit Netflix show" sticker makes want to buy all the books in the world right now. I just saw a book with such a sticker that said "the must read TikTok sensation" and I swear my soul left my body.

Not to sound like an old person, but TikTok was a mistake.

(Like. Can't you just READ a book in the REGULAR WAY because IT LOOKS INTERESTING AND YOU WANTED TO, not because some cutesy TikTok influencer filmed a gimmicky review and made sure to Warn you if there was Problematique Content, and lots of other TikTok users then agreed that sure, This Book Met My Media Standards, and so forth?? Look, I have nothing against book discussions and book recommendations and people enjoying books with their friends in new and technologically updated ways, BUT WHY MUST IT BE TIKTOK FOR EVERYTHING. WHY.)

[ssaltbending]

Firebending or waterbending? Airbending or earthbending? Avatar Roku or Avatar Kyoshi? Boomeraang or space sword? Ba sing se or omashu? Mai or Ty Lee? Be a kyoshi warrior or be a bender? Comics and LOK or atla purist? Appa or Momo? Was Jet right or wrong? Fire nation army or dai li? Haru or teo? “My first girlfriend turned into the moon” or ”that’s rough buddy”?

Tagging: @heavensweetheart @fortunatelychaoticphantom and @beyond-far-horizons

atla this or that

firebending or waterbending? airbending or earthbending? avatar roku or avatar kyoshi? boomerang or space sword? ba sing se or omashu? mai or ty lee? be a kyoshi warrior or be a bender? comics and lok or atla purist? appa or momo? was jet right or wrong? fire nation army or the dai li? haru or teo? “my first girlfriend turned into the moon” or “that’s rough buddy”?

[ssaltbending]

@fortunatelychaoticphantom I would make a more elaborate post than this but it's 1AM and I should be asleep. I'll just say this:

the main problem with mai are not her character traits, but how the narrative goes out of its way in order to portray her as a suitable love interest for zuko.

When. she. is. not.

I rest my case... for now.

Can we talk about how Mai literally didn't care if her brother lived or died. Like atleast Ty lee's introduction introduces her as sympathetic from the beginning -only joining because Azula threatened her, but Mai's 2 year old brother is kidnapped and her re-action is thank God you arrived Azula its so boring here let's NOT trade this politically important person for my BABY BROTHER.

Yeah, Mai’s not allowed to care about anything, including her own family, because that’s her whole schtick - being bored and unmoved by anything around her.

Mai and Ty Lee were clearly conceived as a duo of sidekicks for Azula with fundamentally opposite temperaments - Ty Lee bright and bubbly, Mai gloomy and dour. Like, that’s the starting point for writing these two characters, so to some extent it’s natural that the episode which introduces them presents them as such in a rather flat way. And in that basic way, they work. The problem comes in book three, when they take this one-note character that is Mai and put her in the role of love interest to the show’s most complex character - without giving her any more depth. And on top of that, the one note she’s got is completely wrong to complement Zuko. Ty Lee barely has any more personality than Mai, but as I’ve previously discussed, even she would work better in that role, given what traits she does have.

[royaltealovingkookiness]

@fortunatelychaoticphantom  Yeah, that S2 moment is very interesting. Especially if you dig deeper into the comics and realize the origin and how emotionally charged that mask is - it’s also connected to the unspeakable secret and pain of Zuko losing his mum, but also to the rare happy memories of his childhood with Azula. The Blue Spirit plays the bad guy to be the good guy. 

Once Zuko lets go of the mask, he lets go in a way of his dream to be “the crown prince, Ozai’s and Ursa’s son” again, but he’s still not sure who he supposed to be. And after spending many years trying to be the son he thinks his father wants, he tries to be the nephew son, he thinks his uncle wants. But neither of those things is his true path - he still has a long way to go. 

I love the fact that Zuko confronts Ozai basically as the Blue Spirit - but the mask is off.

The first time he really actively went against Fire Nation interests was in The Blue Spirit. Then he needed a mask, an alter ago - some way to dissociate himself from what he was doing (which was at the time in such great conflict with everything he understood loyalty to the Fire Nation to be).

But in The Day of the Black Sun, he has gone through the entire learning curve - he understands that his destiny is not controlled by his father who wronged him, that standing up and saying that the Fire Nation is on the wrong side of history does not make him to be a traitor, that helping the Avatar is actually how he can be loyal to his country.