#inv3rtebrate

[fursasaida]

inv3rtebrate replied to your post “the prof I’m TAing for: your job is to simplify the material as much...”

Hey that's teaching! Constant adjustment needed cause you never know what the students do & don't know. (Incidentally, I wouldn't have been able to answer your lowball question re: loosening regulations back in college, bc my high school social science education was total crap involving zero theory and using textbooks published in 1987, so)

yeah, I am trying to keep it framed that way in my mind! The combination of having aimed too high (which in this case went along with underpreparing due to not being able to do any work whatsoever Thursday through Sunday and having my own classes Monday and Wednesday) and being EXTREMELY tired is making me feel pretty low about it (I literally had to pause more than once and figure out what the hell I was saying today, it’s not a great look), but I know it’s bound to happen. And I know I changed at least one person’s mind about welfare, so hey.

Yeah, the student who answered that question is generally really on the ball. I think it’s harder to judge what people do and don’t know because this class is about social inequality in the city, and so the students--who, you know, experience that directly (especially given this student body)--come to it with a lot of experience and life/family history that’s relevant, plus preconceptions from just Living In Society. The upside of this is that I can absolutely get them to talk and even debate, even if nobody did the reading; they have something to draw on. The downside is that you never know when it’s going to turn out that, sure, somebody knows why people argue over things like Amazon HQ2 or Hudson Yards, but they don’t understand the difference between a publicly and privately funded project. I feel like every time I do small group activities it’s basically a ruse to force them to actually engage with the texts they were assigned, because otherwise it’s just people saying their opinions--not that that has no educational value, but I think I owe them more than that. But that’s exactly where I ran into trouble today, lol.

[star-anise]

inv3rtebrate replied to your post “Me: WHY CAN’T PEOPLE SEE I’M A GOOD PERSON Friend: You’re a good...”

I think though (for me) there's something about how the voices in my brain whisper to me that "validation has to be earned" -- that it doesn't count that my friends find me good, because they're people who like me (and are therefore biased!) and if I'm REALLY good then people who have no reason to like me will show/tell me that I'm good anyway. (which of course is fucked up, but that's what the brain whispers say)

I feel like we all need this today:

I couldn't find a viable transcript, sorry, but I do have some notes written up.

In it she uses the imagery of Theodore Roosevelt's "man in the arena" passage, this one:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.

"If you've committed to creating in your life," she says, there is only one guarantee: "you are gonna get your ass kicked."

And then shares a decision she reached:

"If you're not in the arena, also getting your ass kicked, I'm not interested in your feedback."

Because she talks about who we invite into the arena, whose opinion we care about: "I thought, if you're my fan, if you're here supporting me, how important could you be? Like, I'm trying to win over the people who hate me. You simply love me. You just hold my hair back when I'm puking, you pay bills with me and raise kids with me, how important could you be? I'm looking for the stranger in the mall. That's who I'm trying to win over."

Then later: "We're so self-critical. And one of the things that I think happens... is there is an ideal of what you're supposed to be. And what a lot of us end up doing is we orphan the parts of ourselves that do not fit with what that ideal is supposed to be. And what it leaves when we orphan all those parts of ourselves is it just leaves the critic."

She talked so much about being committed to courage as a virtue and the necessary commitment to action in the face of the risk of failure (DAMMIT) I went and looked up her bit on courage from The Gifts of Imperfection:

“Courage is a heart word. The root of the word courage is cor - the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage meant "To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart." Over time, this definition has changed, and today, we typically associate courage with heroic and brave deeds. But in my opinion, this definition fails to recognize the inner strength and level of commitment required for us to actually speak honestly and openly about who we are and about our experiences -- good and bad. Speaking from our hearts is what I think of as "ordinary courage.”

And love:

We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection. Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them.

[septembriseur]

inv3rtebrate replied to your photoset

what is this and why does it look like john silver grew a different face and is sitting in a diner with james flint (wearing a 21st c version of his pirate leather jacket)

That is The Exorcist and those people are Father Tomas Ortega (who has thrown away a promising life as an up-and-coming star of the Church to train as an exorcist) and excommunicated exorcist Marcus Keane (who is gay, sarcastic, unbelievably traumatized, draws birds in the Bible as a hobby, and compares the experience of seeing God’s face to getting the first hit of a drug, so I probably don’t need to explain that he is My Son). Not pictured: smooth, cool, ultra-civilized Father Bennett (who has always already had enough of Marcus’s shit); Scruffy Dad John Cho, who has a houseful of foster children that are getting possessed by demons. 

It is a peculiar, wobbly, erratically interesting little show that would make for TREMENDOUS fic. The second season just started.

idiagroena replied to your photoset

I don't know if youre about to Get On This Bullshit or not (please do) but consider Practical Magic(1998) against the canon/stereotypes of Exorcism Horror Films, including such beats is "is this really happening" "is this a metaphor for abuse" "who is competent/allowed/necessary to heal this victim" :)

The Exorcist does this too (I can’t tell from this message if you watch the show or not)— exorcism is pretty explicitly figured as being about rape and abuse, the lasting impact of trauma comes into things, and there’s a whole question of even different approaches to healing victims. I mean, Practical Magic is an upbeat romantic comedy, so obviously the two have very different tones, and The Exorcist isn’t woman-centric in the way that Practical Magic so delightfully is, although it does have some interesting women. But what I would love is for someone to take the characters and the concept of The Exorcist and run with them in the way that fanfiction can. 

[drivingsideways]

inv3rtebrate replied to your post: I am never over Hal Gates :(( Jack and...

you know what I’d like to see in the world? I’d like to see stories about mr gates and miranda. (I think when he took richard guthrie ot her house it’s implied that they at least know each other by face… and boy there must be good stories there)

y’know, i’ve been obsessed with the idea of writing a pre/post maria aleyne Miranda/James fic, and now I’m like what about a pre/post Maria Aleyne Hal & Miranda fic and whether Hal was one of the few people she talked to, one of the few people James let into that little sanctuary he carves out and then after Maria Aleyne, does Hal see her face as she clasps James to her and tbh I’m enraged that you brought this to my attention

[madisilverflint]

inv3rtebrate ha risposto al tuo fotoset ““You and I are gonna be p a r t n e r s till they put us in the...”

I went on a Black Sails related wikipedia binge last night and found out that Clara Paget is not only a model but a Lady as in the daughter of a Marquess and considering the Bonny and Rackham story in BS this is kind of blowing my mind

This is truly amazing?! you know? :) I didn’t know that! XD

[sea-changed]

inv3rtebrate replied to your photoset: Today in “things that have ruined my entire...

“it just punched my emotions in the goddamn throat” is ABOUT RIGHT THANKS FOR THAT

I had to suffer, so now ALL OF YOU DO TOO.

sidewaystime replied to your photoset: Today in “things that have ruined my entire...

I needed to know this though!

It’s such absolutely crucial information, tbh. I had been convinced for some reason that she wasn’t wearing it in 1715, but I’m so glad I went back and checked, because it makes so much sense with the other info we’re given about what’s going on with her and it just absolutely fucking kills me.

[lordnochybaty]

@inv3rtebrate replied to your post “I like all the theories about how james and thomas run away from the...”

   I recommend a fic on AO3 titled "Unaccommodated Man", by kvikindi. It might have just what you're looking for.

Thanks! I will check it out for sure :)

[cesperanza]

inv3rtebrate replied to your photoset

DONNAAAAAAA

DONNNNAAAAAA!

[justgot1]

inv3rtebrate replied to your link: US Special Forces Deployed To 70 Percent Of The...

DEM TAGS. AMAZING.

Paraguay will come around. Nobody can give them what we can. *Grabs own junk and leers*

[yeahcoolduck]

inv3rtebrate

  Sam/Steve is weirdly a notp for me like, Sam...

+1. and I think sam is emotionally intelligent enough to realize that himself, too.

yeah I think so, which probably contributes to why I always side-eye the pairing a little bit.  I mean, I’m really not trying to shit on people’s ship; it totally comes down to how you write the characters, and I have a notoriously harsh interpretation of Steve, so when I see Sam/Steve in the tags my brain automatically goes to “either that relationship is an inevitable tirefire where Sam’s identity is slowly subsumed into Steve’s spiral of righteous self-destruction and that is too tragic for me, or Sam is too self aware to let that happen so he would never actually be in this relationship, ergo tag does not compute.”  It skips over the possibility of Steve having his shit together...

[anghraine]

Hi this is random but: I found your blog through your recent Rogue One ethics post and started trawling through your LOTR tags... Queue 1.5 hrs of me yelling DENETHORRRRRR!!! My much maligned and underappreciated fave! And your post about movie Gondor lacking aesthetics (esp comp to Rogan) is 100% on point! Thanks for being awesome!

Oh, you’re welcome!

LOTR was actually the first online fandom I got into  (I think I was 17?), so I’ve had lots of time to polish my grudges, lol. Especially since Faramir is my favourite Tolkien character, so I run into The Denethor Discourse a lot. But Denethor is one of my all-time faves too, so I’m pretty perpetually >:|.

Thanks about movie Gondor, too! I feel it gets overwhelmed by the coolness of the Pelennor battle and the WRONGWRONGWRONG of most Gondorian characters, but it’s just this ... shell. *grumpy Gondorian stan fistbump*

[fursasaida]

@inv3rtebrate

there’s nothing really special i have to say! i just feel like i don’t learn anything much from listening to them talk unless they’re interviewing a cast member or prod team member, and when they are interviewing those types i find their whole...manner? i guess? really cringey. for example, i listened to an interview of theirs with luke arnold and they kept making these extremely tame but obvious ~sexual jokes and i was like, i will literally pay you money to stop making me suffer this. give me the tape with yourselves edited out so i can know peace. he is a real person who can hear you right now and is having to be polite. like, it might have been less bad if they’d been genuinely raunchy instead of making jokes i would have made when i was about 13? idk. something about the whole manner really doesn’t work for me. i’ve only listened to like 2.5 episodes where they aren’t doing interviews (because inevitably they say something that makes me ragequit), so i can’t comment honestly on their insight or lack thereof. but i’ve never yet heard anything from them that made it worth putting up with the things that made me ragequit.

those things are partly the white feminism of it all, partly the STRAIGHT feminism of it all (i think in the first episode they complain about Max and Eleanor having a sex scene, and i was like...oh i see you don’t understand anything), and partly the fact that i have a pretty low tolerance for inaccuracy. i can deal with mistakes here and there if i’m getting something greater out of the experience as a whole, but if i don’t feel that i am then i will just be unfairly and inordinately bugged.

[potofsoup]

rubyandhergingercat answered your question “Prompt comic poll?”

ALL OF THE ABOVE

I appreciate your enthusiasm, dearest, but that’s not particularly helpful in me deciding how to end this bit.

(I’m thinking of starting February with a different starting scene altogether.)

inv3rtebrate replied to your post “Weekly Update”

happy chinese new year! wishing you and your family health, happiness, and strength for the year ahead!

新年快乐！  It’s the year of the Chicken!  Yum!  :D!!!  

yuss check out the money and the magic wand and the many-children fruit, A+++   Chinese people are SO CLASSY lol

[winteredfall]

Hey! One-time NYC resident here, saw your ask for Morgan and thought to chime in. 1) FOR SURE walk across the Brooklyn Bridge (from Brk to Manh) if the weather is nice. This is not at all hype. 2) The Tenement Museum - if you have time, do one indoor + one outdoor tour. Since your blog is Cap themed, this will give you All the Feels. 3) Prospect Park -- ditto, also nicer than Central Park IMO. 4) Financial District is cooler looking than Midtown. Feel free to message me with questions!

Hi, thank you!! Omg I keep being told to walk across the bridge, definitely on the list. If anyone else has suggestions for what to do/see in New York (I will be there for ~2.5 days over Labor Day weekend) lmk!!

[drivingsideways]

inv3rtebrate replied to your photoset: winifredwevansedits: → ROMANOGERS  || Steve x...

this movie was the best on so many levels

it was! steve and natasha, FURY AND NATASHA OMG, and of course the deliciousness that is steve/sam and also that moment where maria hill looks sam up and down and goes who the fuck is this ahahaha

[the-real-xmonster]

On Notte Stellata

Hi Alice, love your blog so much, thank you for all your thoughtful and eloquent write up on figure skating and Yuzuru especially! I have a question that has been nagging at me for a while: did you notice in Yuzu's Notte Stellata performance he somehow always (at least from what I've seen, OG, WC, GP series..) ended it later after the music has stopped? I heard one commentator mentioned the audience clapping was so loud he couldn't hear the music, but I don't think that's the answer. :) --- @life-is-a-foreign-language

Hi :) It’s not Yuzu who is unable to hear the music, it’s us, the audience.

Here, I’m going to use this video from NHK 2016 as illustration. Notice how the music started at 00:28? The version Yuzu uses for his EX is the complete track by Il Volo, uncut, 03:51 in length, which means that the music should play in that performance until 04:19. If you forward that video to 04:19 you would see that that was exactly the moment Yuzu finished his performance. The thing is, the final 5 seconds or so in that song consist of very quiet, soft and fading piano notes, and the audience never managed to stay still until the last moment: everybody always started applauding even before Yuzu finished his last spin, so you can’t really ever catch those final notes.

Yuzu, alone, in all of his Notte Stellata performances, was the person who knew the music by heart and skated to it until the very last note was over :)

hello -- thanks for all your wonderful fs analysis! recently I was watching the olympic channel's video of the pyeongchang gala, and one of the commentators (I think it's Belinda Noonan) complimented yuzuru for being a student of the sport and having incorporated references to figure skating history in the notte stellata program. I'm very curious as to what those references may be, but there doesn't seem to be any discussion online about this! could you help? --- @inv3rtebrate

Some day, after all this is over, and you have time, and we are looking back at this amazing 2 weeks, I would love to know more about Notte Stellata: one commentator said that it is a masterclass in figure skating, which I get in terms of skills, but then she said it contains these references to the history of figure skating and I wish I could see that... I know about the delayed axel, but what other historical references are there in that choreography? Do you see them? Thank you!!!

I wouldn’t say there are a lot of specific historical references, per se, in Notte Stellata (aside from, as you said, the delayed Axel, and the long choreographic twizzles, which are two very obvious throwbacks). But it is true that NS does have the mood and feel of what I’d call a 6.0 program. 

Back in those days, the technical elements were much less clearly defined, and as a result, the requirement was a lot looser compared to today. As the new rule got applied and skaters got used to the stringent structure of a program under the IJS, you will mostly see them carrying that habit over to their exhibitions as well. During exhibition programs, you will still see traces of competitive performances in the way the skater and their choreographer “partition” their skate into clear-cut technical elements, only the elements they use in exhibition are easier, or are those that the skater is most comfortable with. 

Now, Notte Stellata is a program which breaks that mold of competitive structure. The thing that immediately stood out to me when I first watched NS was how well everything blended together in that program. I mean, yes, of course, all of Yuzu’s programs are usually seamless in transition, but even by his standard, NS is a special case, because you can’t even tell which part is transition and which part is not. From start to finish, it’s one unified choreographic flow.

Secondly, you'd see in that program long stretches of Yuzu simply... skating (he doesn’t start his first spin until 1 minute 30 seconds in), and you would notice that in those intervals, he does not include a lot of ISU-sanctioned “difficult turns and steps”. What he does is mostly edgeworks, glides, and choreographic movements, all of which, basically, constitute a display of sheer skating skills.

Then there are the 2 spins, which serve as the highlights of the program, a dynamics you don’t see that often, or at all, in modern competition. Actually, aren’t you mildly surprised that, yes, there are only 2 spins total in NS? Yuzu does a lot of revolutions and changes of position in those two, so they feel much more substantial compared to the average spin you see in competition. Those qualities also remind me of the 6.0 era, because ever since the definition of spin levels was established under IJS, spins have become a lot more restrictive, as everybody tries to adhere to the level requirements. In competition, and even in exhibition these days, you hardly ever see this kind of elaborately, exquisitely, choreographed spins anymore.

To sum it up, Notte Stellata is a figure skating program in the purest sense of those words, and that was, IMO, the essence of the 6.0 era.

P.S.: Actually, the only element that is completely modern in Notte Stellata is, yep, you guessed correctly, the triple Axel :)