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rabbitcruiser · 19 days

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National Read a Book Day

For some people, reading is their ultimate form of relaxation and fun! For others, reading can seem like a bit of a chore. No matter what category you fall into, we encourage you to embrace National Read a Book Day. Usually, it is simply about finding the right book for you. From memoirs to sci-fi; there are so many different types of books out there today, so use National Read a Book Day to find the perfect book for you to really get stuck into. Read on to discover everything that you need to know about National Read a Book Day and the different ways that you can celebrate this date.

Learn about National Read a Book Day

National Read a Book Day is the perfect day to get lost in a good book. You are encouraged to get your head down and get lost in a story, whether fact or fictional. It is also a great day for encouraging others to read books and raising awareness about them. After all, there are many different benefits that are associated with reading. This includes the fact that it can lower stress, as well as improving concentration and memory. Studies have shown that adults who spend time reading tend to take part in activities over their lifetime that are more mentally stimulating when compared with those who don’t, as well as showing a slower cognitive decline. Plus, books are an inexpensive way of learning more about the world and having fun.

There are so many reasons why we recommend reading a book, not only on National Read a Book Day, but whenever you find time out of your bust schedule to do so. Reading a book gives you the chance to sit in your favorite chair and enjoy some peace and quiet after all. Plus, if you are one of those people that love quotes, you are going to find plenty of good ones when reading a book.

You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.

Other reasons why we recommend reading books is because most movies out there are based on novels, which often tend to be better than the films. After all, there is only so much that you can cram into a couple of hours on screen, whereas a book is going to enable you to delve deeper into the journey. Plus, books aren’t only about reading great tales. There are a lot of books out there that can change your perspective on life and help you to live life to the fullest. You will be surprised by how much a book like this can change your outlook and bring a lot of good to your existence.

History of National Read a Book Day

The first celebration of National Read a Book Day was around the end of the first decade of the 2000s and was almost certainly the idea of a librarian, probably one who was encouraging youngsters to read a book.

Of course, there are a lot of significant dates in history relating to books. In 1455, people around the World were given the chance to read thanks to the Gutenberg Bible. This was the first book that was mass-printed. It was produced in Mainz, Germany. As the name indicates, it is a Bible. It was produced by Johann Gutenberg and it is written in Latin.

The first book that was printed in English was the “The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye.” This was printed by William Caxton in 1473. The text is a translation of the French stories about Troy. We’d have to wait several hundred years for the first book to be written on a typewriter. This was Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer.”

National Read a Book Day Timeline

4000 BC Writing begins in Mesopotamia

With some rudimentary squiggles and lines that represent pictures of animals, marks are made on clay that are the first parts of writing.

Akkadian Princess and High Priestess Enheduanna writes hymns and signs her name on the clay tablets. These and other early texts are meant to be read out loud.

7th Century BC First organized library is established

In the Ancient Middle East, an Assyrian ruler in Nineveh creates a collection of more than 30,000 cruciform tablets.

1450 Gutenberg invents the printing press

An invention that changed everything for education is developed as a working prototype in Germany by Gutenberg. It is ready for commercial use in just a few more years.

1800s-1900s Literacy rates rise

As the Industrial Revolution brings an increase of accessibility to books, the ability to read also increases for the common person.

How to celebrate National Read a Book Day

Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we’re someone else, disrupting the delusion that we’re permanent and at the center of the universe. Suddenly (we’re saved!) other people are real again, and we’re fond of them.

On National Read a Book Day, it’s not compulsory to read a whole book but the day serves as inspiration to people to read a section of a book they particularly enjoyed, to read with children, to donate a book to a children’s school library, or to host a book reading party.

Although the day was probably thought of with print books in mind, e-books are equally suitable for celebrating National Read a Book Day. The main goal is to encourage reading, as both fiction and non-fiction books open up huge unknown vistas to enquiring minds.

Taking the opportunity to enjoy some time out of the day to relax and read is good for the soul and the mind.

Not only is National Read a Book Day a good day for you to, well, read a book, but it is also a good day to encourage other people to do the same. You can spread the word online about the benefits that are associated with reading. You can share your favorite books, as they may encourage other people to give them a read.

We would also recommend joining a book club. You can join a book club in your local area or you could join an online book club if you don’t want to go to meetings face-to-face. Book clubs are a lot of fun because they encourage you to read more and you can share your thoughts on a good book with others. If you are already a member of a book club, why not use National Read a Book Day to organize a book party for them? You can invite all of the members of the book club and discuss a book. You can all bring a dish that is inspired by the book. This is a great way to have fun and celebrate your love of books together.

Another way to celebrate National Read a Book Day is by organizing your books. Do you have a whole host of books scattered around your home? Maybe you have a book full of books that is simply gathering dust? If so, now would be the perfect opportunity for you to organize your books. You can decide on which books you’re going to keep and which books you won’t read again. For the ones that you won’t read again, you have several different options here. You could take them to a second-hand book store, you could sell them online, or you could donate them to a charity. It’s up to you! You will feel much better for it. After all, clutter can cause chaos in the mind, and this can make it impossible for you to relax and fully embrace a good book.

So there you have it: some of the different ways that you can celebrate National Read a Book Day. Of course, the best way to celebrate this day is by grabbing a good book and getting lost in it.

National Read a Book Day FAQs

When is National Read a Book Day?

National Read a Book Day comes every year on September 6 when people set aside other activities and enjoy the beauty of reading a good, old-fashioned book.

How to Read a Book online?

The internet offers a variety of sources to read online books for free, especially older books that have aged out of their copyright. Project Gutenberg, Open Book, Open Library and The Library of Congress all have free items on offer.

What is National Read a Book Day?

National Read a Book Day is just what it sounds like–it’s a day that encourages people to read a book! Set aside some time to sit in a room and quietly read a book–whether reading for yourself or to a child.

How to celebrate National Read a Book Day?

Whether going to a library, starting a book club, donating a book or buying one, this is the day to enjoy everything that has to do with reading and sharing a book.

How was the first book printed?

The first books were originally written by hand, then block printing was used in China in the Tang Dynasty, followed by the printing press that came into commercial use in 1450.

Source

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tohisprettyc00l · 11 months

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Hello! I’m here for a toh oc matchup! I’m glad that ur open to writing them bcs I didn’t know if you’d be ok with any of that cuz I’m sure u have plenty of matchup requests lol

Ok so I can’t send pictures to u for some reason so I’m gonna do my best to describe my oc :’)

Oc’s name: Kai Maeverick Riverten

Species: Human

Tracks they’re in at hexide: Oracle and bard

Gender: Non-binary

Sexuality: Bisexual

Palisman: Female Cardinal

Age: 15

Likes: Puzzles, anime, video games, nature, music, daydreaming, riddles, escape rooms, magic, fantasy, sci-fi, cats, dogs, animals in general, cryptids, exploring abandoned buildings, collecting weird/antique objects, stuffed animals, zombie movies, Disney movies, space, playing the guitar, Gravity Falls, Amphibia, bad jokes, puns, sarcasm, shiny things, creepy stories, conspiracy theories, listening to missing person podcasts, true crime cases, Scooby Doo, Ghostbusters.

Kai has short black hair with a side cut with hair that was swept to the left, pale skin, dark purple eyebags, blue and hazel heterochromia, a sharp (ish?) jawline, a thin face with the slightest hint of cheek bones, and a round nose with a slight dent in it because of their square blue glasses that had a few tiny cracks in the frame.

Kai is kind of like Luz’s older sibling

Kai and their mom live with Camila after their mom divorced her dad, and has basically been Luz‘s childhood friend/sibling figure

Kai is usually very quiet and never really speaks, but whenever they do their usually saying something sarcastic or smug, but they’re secretly very kind and compassionate towards people they are close to (such as Luz)

Kai loves Luz like a sister, but also resents her because people in the demon realm always seem to prefer her over them

Kai usually hangs out with Hooty a lot since they’re both attention deprived, and once Lilith came along, they became a trio instead of a duo

Eda prefers Luz over Kai, which is another reason why they hang out with Lilith a lot, because she doesn’t play favorites

Kai is the more pessimistic one, and always focuses on the negative instead of a positive

Kai is also an over thinker, constantly wondering if Luz doesn’t need them anymore because of her new friends or if everybody secretly hates them

The reason why Kai doesn’t have any friends in the human realm was because of their interest in true crime and missing person cases, everybody found it weird and creepy when they were just interested in it

Kai is good at giving advice and helping people

Kai is extremely selfless and doesn’t focus on their own well-being that often

Kai’s father was abusive towards them, which is why their mother divorced him

Kai loves studying things about the Boiling Isles, which is what they do most of the time since nobody really hangs out with them

Kai has insomnia

Kai likes exploring the Boiling Isles with portable Hooty

I hope this wasn’t too much info/not enough info for ya! I don’t wanna overwhelm you :)

I match them with: Willow Park!

-Willow would solve puzzles with them.

-Obv with them liking nature and her liking plants and all that.

-Also to expand on that last one of liking nature not only does she like plants she loves animals of all types.

-Girl collects stuff animals.

-Okay I'm sorry that I keep bringing my ships into this but I ship huntlow, so I guess she just has a thing for Luz's older siblings.

-Idk why and canon literally disproves this in a way but I feel like Willow gravitates toward quiet people. (I know she is best friends with Luz and Gus 2 outgoing people but trust me on this one-)

-Willow treats Kai and Luz on the same level ( Okay she's Kai's girlfriend in this but she doesn't favor one in general yk?)

-Willow would reassure them, bro. She is literally known for being the person who cheers her friends up, I think it's called mom friend but I really don't know.

-If you don't have at least one "weird" interest you can't be friends with Willow actually.

-Honestly, they both seem to have their own problems but focus on others. So they just go in a circle of trying to help each other overcome their problems while not fixing their own.

-She would try to help them with their insomnia.

-Also I might be misremembering but (excluding Lilith) of all the characters who talk about Hooty she's the nicest. She makes one off-handed comment. So she'd be able to get along with Hooty.

I hope you like this! Sorry, it took so long also I didn't proofread this so I'm SO sorry if I misgendered them by accident tell me if I did so I can fix it.

#toh x reader #the owl house x reader #willow toh x reader #willow park x reader #willow x reader #toh matchups

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stellewriites · 4 months

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twenty questions for fic writers 🫡

thanks for the tag @syoddeye!

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

2. what's your total ao3 word count?

699,806

3. what fandoms do you write for?

oh god, ongoing or previous too?? uhm currently batfam, star wars, cod, st - but i’ve had a few extra that i used to write for too

4. top five fics by kudos

i’m not linking them all bc some are,,,, far from my best work. also can u tell i love a long lyric title?

if you can’t give me all, give me nothing ; memorise the way you make me feel ; the way you move like you do ; i’m addicted to the way i feel when i think of you ; took the words right out of my mouth

5. do you respond to comments?

literally every single one,, before getting this account back a few months ago it was the only way i interacted w people in the fandoms so 🤷‍♀️ sometimes it might take a week tho but i try to be quick

6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

i don’t tend to do angst endings? like even in darker angsty fics i usually twist it so it’s like dubcon happy at the end 🥴🥴 sooo maybe either no grave can hold my body down or can i steal a kiss or two? or even choices made in anger

7. what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

liiiiiterally any other fic i’ve ever written lmao

8. do you get hate on fics?

not often? BUT i usually do fluff fics and when i started dabbling in darker stuff that’s when i got more hate - specifically on one fic in particular

9. do you write smut?

yeah! not all the time but maybe 65%

10. craziest crossover:

i dont really do crossovers but my last mando fic was inspired by justified if that counts?

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i know of,, again im not very online to be able to know :/

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

yeah! just one but now i dont do it,, learning curve for me

13. have you ever co-written a fic before?

almost when i was first starting out writing 6 years back but it fell through - katy if ur still out there i hope ur enjoying life <3

14. all time favorite ship?

ffffuckkkkkk i don’t think i can choose bc i dip in and out so often but i do tend to always come back to jaytim? they’re my for lifers i think but soap x reader is a close second atm

15. what's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

i’ll always finish my wips bc i can’t stand to see them unfinished,, but it’s been like three years since i first said i was going to write my sci-fi dystopian jaytim fic and im still not past the first paragraph :/

16. what are your writing strengths?

i think i’m good at dialogue and catching accents and nailing personalities pretty quick,,

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

i’m so fucking slow. if nothing else, watching people write for cod on here has shown me how quick everyone else seems to be able to write :’)

and also with longer fics i’ve gotten into the (bad) habit of leaving out like integral details that i assume the reader will just know bc ive been too in my own head about it all and ive forgotten what i’ve established already; leads to decisions looking like they’ve come out of nowhere or random personality changes

18. thoughts on dialogue in another language?

i’ve attempted it but i have to google translate it so i try to keep it to a minimum and ask for correction in the comments. sometimes i do it italicised but written in english so readers can understand that it’s meant to be another language but dont have to skip to the bottom notes or another tab to understand what’s being said

19. first fandom you wrote in?

teen wolf 🥴

20. favorite fic you've written?

idk if i’ve got a favourite,, in hindsight a lot of the ones i think about most fondly are the ones that absolutely killed me off when writing so i’ve got real rose tinted glasses about them all. however these are few that should get honourable mentions just because i like them and they didn’t pop up earlier

whew this was long i think i yapped ontoo much lmao but it was so fun!!

no pressure tags: @glossysoap @mikichko @kyletogaz @femalefemur @sentientcave @gemmahale @madstronaut and anyone else who wants to give it a go!!

#loved doing this thanks for tagging me sy!!!#very interesting looking back at some of my older fics and old fandoms 🫣🥲 like some of my concepts were p cool like what was i on a few #years ago?? i was bashing out so many fics at one point lmao #like one a month??? who is she??#tag game

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facetsofthecloset · 10 months

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9 people you would like to know better

tagged by @vonlipvig, thanks!

1. 3 ships: Glenda/Mr.Nutt from Unseen Academicals, Adora/Moist from Going Postal etc., uhhh shoot do I even have a non-Discworld ship I actively care about ummmm

OH let’s go for the classic Gay Attorneys Phoenix/Edgeworth lol

2. first ever ship: hmmm. Probably Ranma/Akane from the middle school days. Tbh nowadays I feel like Akane is a lesbian actually but it could work out if they grow up and Ranma becomes more comfortable identifying as gender-fluid or gender neutral

3. last song: I’ve been binging podcasts for the past week or so but I’ve also been playing Stardew Valley while listening, so probably whatever track I last heard there lol

Oh wait I had a midnight crisis last night and listened to The Horror and the Wild by The Amazing Devil a lot so there we go

4. last movie: i genuinely don’t remember, but I think I recently rewatched Nausicaa?

5. currently reading: nothing technically bc I just finished the new Murderbot audiobook but that said GO READ (or listen to, even though the narrator of the audiobook is TERRIBLE at pronouncing names) MURDERBOT DIARIES I PROMISE IT’S WORTH IT

I mean if you’re not a fan of the sarcastic first person narrative format maybe you won’t like it but it’s very well done. It’s my kind of sci-fi, in that it focuses less on tech and worldbuilding (although there’s plenty of that) and more on character and how the worldbuilding actually affects the people in it

6. currently watching: my favorite hbomberguy and Folding Ideas video essays on loop. Although it’s usually as background while I play video games soooo watching might not be the right word lol

7. currently consuming: food-wise nothing; I’m at the doctor’s office waiting room for physical therapy. Media-wise, have been listening to a lotttt of Behind the Bastards, started with the Kissinger stuff. Really makes me think emotional intelligence/healthy coping mechanisms should be taught officially or something. Sure, some people will still be awful but I think at least some people would wind up NOT committing atrocities y’know

8. currently craving: Kailua pig. Or like, one really, really good avocado. The ones back home are probably in season now and yet I am trapped in the temperate zone where no one knows when an avocado is ripe and just toss in some hard green cubes

9. tagging @mariegoos (thanks again for the Murderbot rec!) @bittersweet-poppy @petrabasil @darkprincecait if any of you want to!

#thanks again for the tag!#not a lot of overlap between our media tastes but I always enjoy hearing your thoughts on stuff <3 #tag games

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crouching-vinus · 9 months

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I am back with more!! 29, 46, 51!

Also I read in one of your answers that you were working on trying to get characters' feelings across through action as opposed to writing them out.

I think you're great at that and I enjoy the way it makes me feel when I try to pinpoint why your characters act the way they do (esp with Sukuna in Blackmail).

It makes it super immersive and then the bits of thought you get through a character's pov become a rare treat, a clear snapshot of someone's mind. Makes them seem very real :')

POV switching is in general super fun though AHH (I am a thriving bisexual)

29. What’s something about your writing that you’re proud of?

Oh boy. This is sorta a hard question bc I feel like everything could use improvement all the time, but I guess if I had to narrow it down I am usually really happy with the way I characterize Sukuna. I struggle a little with Reader characters, but I feel like my versions of Sukuna are pretty well set in stone by the time I start writing and they stay consistent and can sometimes be kinda sexy! I also take a personal joy in drawing little parallels between Reader and Sukuna as well as throwbacks to earlier chapters as well.

46. If you could only write one type of AU for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Aaaaaaaaaaah this is so hard because I have such a strong urge now to write a canon compliant Sukuna, and eventually other AU versions too, but I think… I would have to go with the standard modern AU. It’s just really fun to reinterpret characters and imagine what their lives would be like, like Uraume being a legitimate chef and Nobara going into fashion. There’s just a lot of freedom and that could keep things fun I feel.

51. Does what you like to write differ from what you like to read?

As far as fanfiction goes, I would say mostly yes. I love enemies to lovers, AUs of any kind, deeply flawed characters, elements that skew slightly dark. But as far as actual books not really. I just don’t find a lot of romances that I enjoy outside of fanfiction, honestly, so I usually read literally anything else- sci fi, drama, horror, etc.!

And thank you!! I love that you can pick up on those things and that they’re enjoyable as well! I loveeeee POV switching and I hope to explore it more in future works especially! Thank you dear for indulging me again ❤❤❤ Keep thriving!!

#ask vinus

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dumb-doll-lips · 1 year

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aaa i was so happy to see you so excited to talk about makeup!! tysm bc ive been v torn on lip glosses! sadly my skin hates the toofaced extreme bc it really is the absolute most effective! i actually tried on the lawless one in sephora and it was comfy, but im not crazy about the shades of pink and it wasnt v plumping? like i dont think i would've thought anything of it if it wasn't CALLED a plumping gloss. also i super recommend you check out kayali pistachio yum! it smells cotton candy and whipped creamy and lasts a really long time! noticeably sweet but also not overbearing! take care!!💖

Aww you’re sweet. Thank you

And yeah, the too faced extreme def isn’t as friendly but so does the best in my experience. And yeah, I’m not getting the hype of the lawless one. I like the color I got but it feels like a tinted chapstick. If it wasn’t a pretty tint imo I’d be returning it.

So to keep on w the sharing lots of info trend, if the strongest plumping ones weren’t working for me, I’d prolly focus more on the the feel of the gloss than I’d it’s plumping bc the week plumping ones don’t do much anyways in my experience at least. So I’d look for a gloss that makes my lips fill very pillowy and is on the thicker side. I already don’t remember what all I said in the previous ask, but the glossier and makeup by Mario ones I talked about are coming to mind. And then also start regurlarly exfoliating uour lips if you aren’t already.

And ohmygosh yes. I have a little version of the pistachio yum already. I didn’t even wait to the sale. I’ve been loving for spring (along side Ellis Brooklyn’s sci fi for spring ad well). If you like that kayali one, the closest I have in my collection to is a more affordable one, it has a similar powdery candy vibe that it has when I wear it. It’s honey and the moon by Tokyo milk, it feels sweeter and a little sharper. It smells like violet candies and vintage lipsticks to me. It’s lacking a lot of the gourmand notes but iits yummy and I think like available on Amazon usually and had a lower price point.

#ask #makeup #ref

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flwoie · 1 year

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sending again cuz it didn’t go through~

ooh well if u need help with ateez, or the ateez research lmk cuz they’re my ult lol

and oml i know what u mean!!! i love daydreaming stories up and watching the movies roll in my head! and i also feel ya, i had a series in another fandom but i lost motivation so it now resides in the trenches of my drive lol

aww and friends are the best 💗 hmm as for me i love writing poems to ease my thoughts, listening to my comfort songs like “light” by ateez or energy-boosting songs like paradoxxx invasion + happy fools, and i also like watching YouTube vids of my faves (and soon-to-be faves too lol!)

qotd: what are some of ur favourite things to read? for me, i really like fantasy and protective main leads 😊

oh and one more question~ is this time good to send asks? or is my usual time better? i did it roughly 12 hours apart (e.g if i usually send my ask at 1pm, i’m sending this one at 1am in my timezone)

have the best day/night!

-3

thanks for offering help 🫶🫶 i’d love to learn more about ateez :)

daydreaming about stories is the best, it’s like watching a free movie even tho sometimes my attention span is low so i do get ads (if u get my joke LMAOOO) there’s this one story i wrote and it’s almost been a year since i wrote it and i only have less than 200 words written down 😭😭

u write poems?? i’d love to read them if u don’t mind and yess music and watching is so comforting, i haven’t heard of light so i’ll go listen to that rn !!

my answer to ur question: tbh i don’t read any genre outside of romance & fantasy, it’s an obsession atp 🤒 whenever i go to the library, i always try to find the really good romance books but sometimes i’m always left with the horrible ones 💔💔 i tried reading horror and sci-fi cause i heard my crush likes writing them (ahah my crush is also a writer 🤧🤧) and i could not even finish the first chapter 😭😭 anyways moving onto characters, i’m kinda picky about the trope between the main character and their love interest. i HATE HATE bully x victim and that does not equal to e2ls bc the bully x victim trope is so shitty, like there’s only one sided abuse 😭. i like any kind of trope that isn’t toxic and weird.. anyways, there’s a lot of details i love to find in books. for example, whenever im reading a book with one of the main character’s having a cast, there’s a part where the love interest would draw the two of them on the cast and there would be a little heart between them, it warms my heart sm 😭 oh and when it comes to exes to lovers (and this is specifically the kind where they had to break up for a sad reason so there’s still some mutual pining), they reunite in the most weirdest way and afterwards one of them is like “oh how are you” when they totally mean ‘how are you since our break up’ (yes i took this from a fic i read) I STARTED BURSTING INTO TEARS 😭😭😭

okay my turn to ask u a question !! what kind of tropes do u like and hate?

and i don’t mind what time u send ur asks, i’ll answer to them anyways :>

have a wonderful day/night as well my three <33

#🏴‍☠️ : sona’s anons #three anon !

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lethalhoopla · 2 years

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Sometimes I think about the very human necessary work that gets left out of a lot of sci-fi just because... well, it goes unconsidered, beyond the usual realm of what the creators of games/movies (and often but not always books) have experience in or close connection to... and it feels like it goes assumed it can be ‘optimized’ out of necessity once we get Advanced Enough to Print Anything or what have you.

but like... until people are practically no longer people, we simply can’t optimize our way out of certain jobs. Robots simply aren’t and can’t be optimized enough to do the work. Sewing is one example*; we literally can’t ‘robot’ the fashion business (and not just bc it’s a nightmare for labor rights and fast fashion is a blight), but because the work is so fine-tuned to humanity, to countless tiny decisions made with infinite levels of craft and deft handwork, and it’s simply not replicable by robots until literally the point of robot sentience - and deftness of hand. And machinists - there’s a reason we don’t just 3D print all our metalwork and fine fiddly bits despite how much better its gotten. It goes a ways, sure, but machinists are craftspeople and its an art, knowing the machines and their needs and countless details about environment, wear and tear, necessity, human error, and more.***

Countless trade jobs, in general; anything that isn’t number crunching, anything that requires judgement and humans and their ability to work with context.****

(There’s a reason that despite corporations’ best efforts and wishes, they simply can’t robot their entire workforce - at best they can get a ton of machines that eliminate ‘some’ humans, ‘grunt work’ humans - who still deserve respect and a living wage dammit - but those machines still require human operation.)

(.... Don’t get me started on the problems & horrors in arguing that you’ll create ‘better’ jobs with turning crafts and trades people into machine operators....)

... but a lot of sci-fi sort of accidentally sterilizes the messy humanity (or other sentient species) of our endlessly layered systems of existence. Besides the occasional ‘is replicator food Real Enough??’ debate or ‘how True/Good are holo-sims’ and so on, man, we just don’t see a lot of that - even in ones that have the ‘oh no we exported Capitalism into our Space Dystopia’ angle.

Maybe that’s why I love Space Engineers so much. It’s kinda the closest we get to acknowledging the sentient person element of it all on a level lower than military/strategy/researcher, etc. People elbow deep in their space ships, keeping exponentially complicated spacecraft going, the only thing between you and the cold vacuum of space. Even in stories not focused on that element, there’s a common thread of acknowledging that there is something to maintaining -crafts, be they space- or otherwise, that transcends programming and robots and just has to be done with your hands.

-------

* There’s a short Wired article if you’re interested on Why Robots Can’t Sew Your T-Shirt, and while I remain horrified by the lack of critical thought or challenge put to the start-ups attempting to make these robots/machines**, it does a solid job of describing the ‘tech’ where its at - and why its so complicated. To whit, there’s too many variables, and the skilled people who make our clothes, however underpaid, can’t simply ‘be replaced’ (you capitalist jerks)

** if you’re interested in more thoughtful breakdowns of people in the fashion industry, especially non-mass-produced fashion - more ethical/well-sourced/etc - I definitely recommend looking into it. If you’re interested, there’s a great example of how sewing can’t be so simply boiled down to fancy machinework in the topic of lace (and lingerie) here - yes this is a site called Lingerie Addict, no it is not kinky/etc lol. Fascinating insight into just the one topic, how even with machine made lace the machines have to be set and threaded by hand because the threading requires so much care and experience to handle and ensure quality of.

*** Hell, did you know there are seven types of machinist certifications (in the USA alone)??

**** Artists and fine craftsmen are one example, but what about farmers and ranchers? Drivers and delivery workers, especially in remote areas? Locksmiths? Electricians & plumbers? Cleaners/janitors?***** Road maintenance workers? Massage therapists & physical wellness professionals? Gardeners? Public sanitation workers?

***** Unless you want to be living in a powerwashable, largely featureless/bolted down cube the rest of your sci-fi life, I’m afraid human/sentient judgement about What Can Be Cleaned How Intensely How Often and With What While Putting The Valuables and Fragiles Where, robots aren’t doing much more than vacuuming and windows and the like.

#sci fi thoughts #oops late night workers rights and representation thoughts #lethalhoopla muses about things

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lesbianrobin · 3 years

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What do you think are the good and bad aspects of each season of ST?

ok 1. thank u for this question omg and 2. this answer may or may not be a mess, but either way it’s long (almost 7k words lmao) bc i’m insane, which is why it’s under a cut. it’s still by no means an exhaustive list but these are the things that just kinda came to mind.

also i realize you asked “good and bad” and i wrote this whole post as “strengths and weaknesses” which um. is not Exactly what you asked. but close enough <3 i also ended up including a lot of au ideas ksjdckmn bc like i personally hate when people say a certain plot or whatever was bad without suggesting anything that could have improved it yknow so whenever possible i tried to provide Some idea for fixing the issues i had with the show!!

season 1

strengths (this is probably gonna be the longest section but that’s because a lot of these strengths also apply to s2/s3 by default)

nostalgia and authenticity

this one’s pretty simple, but i think that season one did a good job of blending classic eighties media homages (such as the many many e.t./el parallels) with explicit pop culture references (such as mike’s yoda impression, mentions of the x-men, etc) to create a show that’s essentially dripping in early eighties nostalgia without it feeling too forced. before st, i think the most popular depiction of the eighties in mainstream media was that overly exaggerated neon scrunchie aesthetic from the mid to late eighties, and it was usually done in a comedic sense first and foremost. st took a different approach, instead focusing on the early eighties, a time that’s often ignored in favor of going either Full Seventies or Full Eighties, and i think that this choice likely resonated with adults who lived through the eighties and hadn’t yet seen something that felt quite so accurate to their own adolescence. a lot of young people who watched st were totally unfamiliar with this period of time, unfamiliar with books/movies like “stand by me” that st borrows from heavily, and i think st lent more seriousness to the eighties than most young people had experienced so far, and this was refreshing and interesting!

the use of dnd in the show is also quite genius in a way i’m not sure i can articulate?? it isn’t something Everyone would have played at the time, but it’s something that existed within a different context back in the eighties than it does today, and it really lent a sort of authenticity to the naming of the show’s sci-fi elements. like, of course these kids would name parallel dimensions and monsters and superpowers after these similar things in their favorite game! it just feels so real and it grounds st in our reality moreso than you might expect from the typical sci-fi or horror universe.

utilization of existing tropes

almost every single character in st clearly originates from some popular trope. the plot itself is riddled with classic eighties movie tropes. almost every single element of stranger things can be clearly traced back to some iconic eighties film or just to, like, overused horror/sci-fi/mystery/coming-of-age movie tropes in general. this might sound like a bad thing, but it really works in st’s favor! starting off with familiar tropes gives st the ability to easily create a lot of complexity and make a big impact by selectively deviating from those familiar, comfortable tropes!! while el’s whole plot, hopper’s character, etc, are all examples of this in action, i think the steve/nancy/jonathan plot is the greatest example. even from the start, the fact that good girl barb dies while nancy is off having sex with her asshole boyfriend is an incredibly thorough inversion of the most well-known horror movie trope in the book. how often do girls in horror movies have sex for the first time, walk home alone in the dark of night, and live to tell the tale? nancy and jonathan’s dynamic at first glance is a sort of classic “good girl meets boy from the wrong side of the tracks, discovers he’s actually got a heart of gold” thing, but instead of following this well-trodden path, st diverged. nancy is brash, impulsive, and at times downright insensitive. jonathan is angry, bitter, and actually a bit of a creep at first. while they have the capacity to emotionally connect and support one another, they can also bring out each other’s darker side, which is not what we’ve come to expect from that initial tropey dynamic.

in addition, steve, the popular rich asshole boyfriend, is actually... a human being! unlike the cartoonishly evil jocks that we’ve come to expect (especially from eighties movies), steve has complexity. despite his initial immaturity and selfishness, he’s also kind to barb, he backs off when nancy says no, he’s gentle and sweet when they sleep together, his first big Dick Move of the season is in defense of nancy, he realizes the error of his ways after the fight and does what he can to fix it, he’s worried about nancy when he sees that she’s hurt at jonathan’s house, and to top it all off, he ends up saving both nancy and jonathan’s lives when he could have just walked away, and the three of them all work together to fight the demogorgon. like... steve began as the most stereotypical character of all time, and by the end of the season, he had one of the most compelling and unique arcs among the whole cast!

finally, at the very end of the season, instead of dumping steve for jonathan as expected, nancy ends up getting back together with steve, and they’re both on friendly terms with jonathan. i realize that i just kinda. summarized s1. but my POINT is that i don’t think the dynamics between the monster hunting trio would be nearly as fun and interesting had the characters of nancy, steve, and jonathan not been set up to follow certain paths that we already had charted in our own heads. like, within the first couple episodes of s1, it’s pretty obvious that nancy and steve are gonna break up, nancy will get with jonathan, and steve will either die or go full evil or just never be seen again. like, duh! you’ve seen this story a million times! you know that’s how it’s gonna go! so, when the story DOESN’T go that way, the impact of each character’s arc and the relationship dynamics become stronger due to their unexpected complexity and authenticity.

distinct plotlines separated by age group

this one’s rather obvious, but the way that the adults in s1 were essentially in a conspiracy thriller while the teens were in a horror flick and the kids were in a sci fi power-of-friendship story and all three converged at the end... wow. brilliant showstopping etc. not only was it just really well done and unique, it also gave stranger things near-universal appeal. like, there’s genuinely something for pretty much everyone in season one!

casting

obviously this applies to every season sorta by default, but when i think about what made season one So successful, i always think about the cast, and not just winona ryder. yes, she’s absolutely amazing in the show and it’s very doubtful that st would be as big as it is today without her name being attached to it from the start!! however, i think the greatest determining factor in st’s success is the casting of the kids, particularly millie bobby brown. like... el is just absolutely incredible. she’s amazing. this has all been said many times before so i won’t harp on it, but millie and the other kids are all So talented and charismatic and i think their casting has been instrumental to the show’s success.

strong visuals

the way that multicolored christmas lights which have been around for decades are now kinda like. a Stranger Things thing. jesus christ. those lights are probably the biggest stroke of stylistic genius on the show.

atmosphere and setting

this is probably like. the least important one here for me sdjncdsc because i think s2 and s3 both had like Even Better atmospheres and shit but s1 was good too and it laid the groundwork!! i know a lot of people would have preferred st be set somewhere more Spooky with lots of fog or giant forests or whatnot, and while i do enjoy thinking about alternate st settings and how they might alter the vibe, i think hawkins indiana was a good choice. as the duffers have said, placing stranger things in a fictional town allows them more flexibility than if they’d gone with their original plan of using montauk, new york. besides that, i think the plainness and like... flatness... of small-town indiana just Works. like, the fact that hawkins is never really scary on the surface is a big part of the horror in the lab’s actions and their impact. hawkins isn’t somewhere that people just disappear all the time. it isn’t somewhere known for strange occurrences (prior to s1, that is). it isn’t somewhere shrouded in mist and secrecy. hawkins on its surface seems like the sort of place with no secrets and nothing to fear, and that’s the point! the lab is out in the open! it’s right there! everything is so close to the surface, yet so far out of the public eye, and i think that really works.

the byers family’s whole deal (specifically the joyce/jonathan dynamic)

this is going here bc i miss it so bad in s2 and s3. i’m not one of those people who believe The Byers Are The Whole Point of the show, because st is and always has been an ensemble, and el, hopper, and the wheelers are just as instrumental to the plot as the byers, but ANYWAY, i do think the byers were one of the most interesting aspects of s1. joyce’s difficulties with supporting her sons as a poor and (implied mentally ill) single mother, jonathan’s stress as a result of having to earn money, care for his brother, and keep the house in order when his mother is unable to do so, and the resulting tension between them when will’s disappearance and supposed “death” brings the situation to a tipping point? holy shit! it’s so good! that argument after they see will’s “body” is just incredible and gut-wrenching. their relationship feels so real and messy and i think it’s just... good. also winona ryder REALLY acted her heart out and she carried a lot of s1 which i think people often forget to mention so i’m saying it here.

weaknesses

pacing/timing

ok so pacing is probably going to go in each season’s weaknesses, to be honest, because i think they all had a blend of some good and some bad pacing. good pacing is invisible pacing, though, so i probably won’t be putting it in any of the strengths sections and will only be focusing on it in the weaknesses. i’m also probably not going to talk about weird day/night cycle things, just because i don’t want to get nitpicky on timelines because that would require going back and rewatching things to double check timing which i don’t wanna do at the moment lmao. anyway, when i think of bad pacing in season one, i primarily think of two things: nancy’s little trip into the upside down and subsequent sleepover with jonathan, and the sort of staggered nature of the climax in the final episode. the latter is simple so i’ll explain it first: while i understand that each group’s respective climax is like part of a chain reaction and that’s why each big moment happens separately and at different times, i think that st is strongest when the whole group is together, and i think that makes the stakes feel higher too, so i’m not In Love with the way s1 separated everyone and gave each group their own climax.

okay, now on to the nancy/upside down thing! idk if i’ve ever talked about it before, but i think the worst decision made in s1 by far is the inclusion of nancy’s brief trip into the upside down, wherein she dives headfirst into another dimension with absolutely no backup, watches the demogorgon chow down, freaks out and runs around for a minute, and then leaves. like... what the fuck? even putting aside what an idiotic decision this was (because i do think nancy’s tendency to rush into things headfirst is an intentional and consistent character trait), it just kind of destroys any remaining suspense surrounding the demogorgon and the upside down, and it accomplishes basically nothing besides scaring nancy enough to have jonathan sleep over, which is lame. i will break it down.

like, first of all, nancy just getting to waltz in and out of the upside down and get a good, long look at the demogorgon makes the entire thing far less mysterious, and by extension far less scary. like... before this scene, we the audience haven’t got a good look at the demogorgon. we’ve seen its silhouette briefly and we’ve seen a blurry picture of it, but nothing more, and i think that is far more effective at building fear than this jaunt nancy goes on which gives us a full view of the thing and makes it into less of a horrifying nightmare and into more of a humanoid animal. like, maybe this is just me, but i found the demogorgon far less intimidating after that scene than before. it also lets nancy and jonathan know For Sure that they’re right without providing any crucial information that they need to fight the demogorgon (aka it’s unnecessary to the plot), which removes a very compelling story element (the faith nancy and jonathan need to have in order to keep going against a vague and poorly understood enemy, the doubt they might have about each other and their own sanity, the possibility that they might be wrong, the trust they need to have in each other) a bit earlier in the plot than i believe is ideal. at the end of episode 5, nancy goes into the upside down and jonathan doesn’t know where she is and it’s intense!!! you’re thinking like, oh fuck, not only is nancy missing and fighting for her life now too, jonathan might be implicated in her disappearance!! some people already think he’s the one who killed will and people know that he took creepy pictures of barb and nancy before they both disappeared, maybe this is gonna cause some serious problems for him!! maybe nancy will find will in the upside down and she’ll help him survive!! fuck, maybe she’ll actually die!! this is huge!! and then episode 6 starts and they’re immediately like oh nevermind jonathan found the tree and got nancy out and she’s fine. my point with all of this is that nancy entering the upside down could have done A Lot in the grand scheme of the plot, but all it did was just... get jonathan to sleep over so he and nancy could have some awkward romance moments and steve could see them together and pick a fight. which could have honestly happened at Any point while nancy and jonathan were working together to hunt down the demogorgon, without ruining the demogorgon’s and the upside down’s mystique. so yeah <3

weird behavior and dumbass decisions that make no sense (aka the whole camera thing)

gonna go off about the teen plot again sorry but: why was nancy so unbothered and quick to forgive jonathan for taking those pictures? girl what the fuck are you doing? why wasn’t that a bigger deal? why was jonathan’s motivation for doing it so weak and why did they just kind of forget about the whole thing? why did nancy TRACK HIM DOWN AT THE FUNERAL HOME while he was PICKING OUT HIS BABY BROTHER’S CASKET to be like hey can you tell me what’s in this creepshot you took? it’s insane. it’s so insane. i mean i think the funeral home thing is hilarious and i don’t mind it being in the show necessarily but like my point here is that i think a lot of character decisions in s1 just kind of.. happened because they Needed to happen for the plot. like, they wrote this plot that required jonathan to be secretly taking pictures of the party and required him and nancy to work together after seeing something odd in the pictures, but they didn’t like... really consider what that event would mean for their characterization and relationship. the whole thing was sort of just dropped with minimal discussion and i think it did both nancy and jonathan’s characters a disservice and was really mishandled.

lighting and saturation/color grading

i am literally begging horror/sci-fi shows to let me see shit. i GET IT okay i understand that when you’re doing cgi effects it helps to keep the lights down and i’m not mad at any of the lighting in the demogorgon/upside down scenes!! i’m really not i think the demogorgon scenes in s1 all look sick!! but like... dude. the colors. where are they. why does everyone look like a vampire. i know blah blah this was probably an intentional stylistic choice intended to mimic film at the time blah blah but dude a lot of old movies are very colorful!! please just let people have color in their faces so everyone doesn’t look like a sheet of paper!!! also i’m white and not a professional lighting designer so yknow grain of salt but i think lucas was kinda poorly served by the lighting sometimes in s1. not Hugely so, not to the degree that i’ve seen poc be poorly served by lighting in other shows, but there were some times where it felt kinda like the lighting setup was just not designed with darker skin in mind.

horror

i just personally don’t find s1 very scary like... ever. i don’t think they were really Trying to be extremely scary yknow so i’m not counting this as a big deal, but i do think that each season has improved on the horror aspects. i think s1′s horror lies more in the mystery and the unknown than in what’s seen onscreen, and as i’ve said already, i think s1 kind of fumbled that suspense ball.

season 2

strengths

the possession plot

i’ll warn u rn this whole s2 strengths section is probably gonna be really short bc idk like. how much there is to really say i feel like it’s all so self-explanatory skjncmn. anyway yeah the possession plot!! eerie as fuck, and noah OWNED. so did winona tbh and finn and sean etc but like. noah. wow! i think the possession plot helped the show maintain a good amount of tension and suspense throughout the season, and a lot of scenes with possessed!will are flatout disturbing to watch. in a good way. i think the mindflayer and will’s possession were far more genuinely frightening than s1′s demogorgon, and it provided a new layer of depth and intrigue to the antagonist besides just “bad monster want eat people.”

tone and aesthetics

halloween season... literally halloween season. halloween season. that is all.

actually i will elaborate a bit and just say that i think s2 did a good job of having the sort of foreboding vibe that s1 was often going for, but without the annoying darkness and desaturation. so points for that.

also st2 is like one of the best Autumn pieces of media ever like it just. like steve and dustin on those train tracks with the fallen leaves all around them.... god. god the vibes are unparalleled. all of the halloween stuff also really contributes to the nostalgia st runs on yknow it makes you think about childhood and trick-or-treating and you kind of get transported like damn... i remember going to the rich neighborhoods to score the good candy..... idk i just think the whole thing is incredibly effective.

“babysitter” steve

by sending nancy and jonathan off together, the show created a problem: what to do with steve? this problem pushed them to create the unconventional and unexpected duo of steve and dustin, and the world is so much brighter for it. seriously though we all know steve and dustin are great i don’t need to argue that point. all i’ll add is that i think allowing steve to grow in this way, serving as a mentor figure and becoming genuine friends with someone so unexpected, really took the originality of his character to the next level. no longer content just to defy his archetype, in s2 steve begins branching out in ways that never would have been considered in s1, creating an incredibly complex and interesting person from the sort of character that most shows would have simply written out or killed off for convenience’s sake. and it works and steve and dustin are such a joy to watch and i love them. <3

the lucas/max plot

so first of all max mayfield is the most perfect baby girl on god’s green earth and idk what i would do without her but anyway. i think lumax is the best romantic relationship in the show and not just because they’re the only ones with like an age-appropriate approach to the whole thing. it’s also because their relationship accomplishes more than just putting the two of them in a relationship!! lucas and max spending time together motivates billy to do his evil shit, providing more conflict in the narrative, and it also helps establish max as part of the group in a relatively natural way while giving both her and lucas a great subplot. lucas (and dustin) has a crush on the new girl, they start spending some time together, and lucas ends up needing to decide whether he’ll keep the secret of the upside down and lose her, or risk both of their lives by telling her the truth. that’s a pretty big, character-defining decision that he gets to make!! max has to choose whether to trust this boy she barely knows and endanger herself, or to walk away and stay safe, yet another great character-defining choice that also contributes to the sense we get as an audience of max as somebody who’s incredibly lonely and desperate for love and connection. this post is way too long already and i have a ton more to say so i’ll stop now but yeah i think lumax really Works in the show without ever distracting or detracting from the overall plot and narrative in the way that some other ships (coughjancycough) often do.

balance between the normal and abnormal

s2 i think did a pretty solid job of melding daily life with more fantastical sci-fi horror elements. i enjoyed seeing so much of the kids at school in the first few episodes!! you really get a strong sense of where they’re at in life, what their daily lives are like, and you get a sort of gradual shift into madness that makes everything feel more grounded than i think it would if they had just leapt straight into the horror shit, yknow?

the el and hopper dynamic

go back and rewatch s2 and tell me that’s not one of the most moving portrayals of parenthood and trauma and growing up that you’ve ever seen. you can’t. or well you can but i won’t listen. i really can’t imagine stranger things without el and hopper’s relationship, and it’s my absolute favorite part of s2. their whole dynamic is so beautiful and complex, and gives them each amazing personal arcs in addition! the black hole scene is literally one of the show’s greatest moments of all time. any given scene between the two of them in s2 is just guaranteed to be heartwarming as well as heartbreaking, and i think that makes for an incredible show.

weaknesses

flashbacks

okay this applies to Every season they All have too many flashbacks but in s2 specifically... please stop showing me shit from season one. i watched it. i know what happened. you don’t need to spoon feed everything to me!! flashbacks can be a really helpful way of delivering information to an audience, but st has a bad habit of not only being kinda demeaning in how often they flash back to shit that the audience already knows, but they also have a bad habit of using flashbacks almost as a crutch to avoid having to deliver information subtly and naturally.

you know i gotta say it... the lost sister

this is so sad. the lost sister really is like a great concept for an st episode, and i’m not mad about the idea of st taking a break from the normal action to focus on one story for a full episode, but the execution of it was just dreadful. kali and her crew feel very over-the-top and stereotypical, and its placement in the season totally kills the tension and excitement that was built in “the spy.”

i think the lost sister honestly could have gone over far better, even with the stereotypical fake-feeling gang kali has, if they had just swapped it with “the spy” like... ok, the end of episode five has el setting off to find kali and will collapsing on the ground seizing. right? imagine if, instead of immediately following will to the lab, we’d followed el. we don’t know what’s happening with will, but it’s a very simple cliffhanger that leaves us on edge without making us feel cheated by the show cutting away. we follow el on her little journey, everything happens much the same as canon, and then at the end, el sees hopper in scrubs. she sees mike, screaming, sees that they’re both in danger. holy shit!!! what the fuck!!! what’s happened since we left will seizing on the ground??? we feel el’s fear and confusion. she decides to go home. and then... boom. “the lost sister” is over. now, we rewind, right back to will seizing on the ground, and “the spy” commences. we learn how they got into the danger that el saw in the end of “the lost sister,” and we sit on the edge of our seats all through “the spy” and “the mind flayer,” KNOWING that el is on her way back to save them but not knowing when she’ll arrive!! idk i don’t think that would have necessarily saved lost sister but i think it may have alleviated some of the issues that i and many others have with it, timing-wise.

the nancy/jonathan sidequest

once again, the idea of nancy going off on her own little mission to find justice for barb after s1 is like. amazing. genuinely i love that plot for her and i can’t imagine anything better for her to have focused on in s2. unfortunately though i think her and jonathan’s little trip to see murray was just kind of... lame. the whole thing just felt like an excuse to get the two of them alone together, yknow? which is fine i guess people contrive all sorts of situations to get characters alone together for romance reasons but in this case i think it just really doesn’t work for me because of what it’s juxtaposed with. like, will is POSSESSED, and jonathan is just off on a mini road trip and sleeping with his bestie, and jonathan never seems to communicate to joyce/will that he left town, and joyce never like... thinks to tell him that will is like sick and fucked up and they’re looking at him in the lab??? like it’s so weird i know joyce always forgets about jonathan when shit’s happening with will but jfc you’d think at some point in that like... 72-ish-hour period where jonathan was out of town she would have thought about him. like at least once. maybe i’m forgetting something and she mentioned him sometime and i missed it but even still, i hate the juxtaposition of nancy and jonathan just like cheers-ing at murray’s place and sleeping together and whatnot while everyone else is dealing with possession or trying to hunt down dart yknow? it feels really boring in comparison and i think it could have been done far better. like it was SO insanely easy for them to get into the lab and get an admission of guilt and escape with it!! i think it might have been a lot more engaging if maybe someone from the lab tailed them to murray’s place and they had to like lose the tail and race to get the recording out to as many news outlets as possible before they got caught, or something like that. the tension in their plotline is completely resolved in episode four!! episodes five and six are just them screwing around and addressing envelopes. while there were a lot of strong ideas in this plotline (i really enjoy nancy going out of her way to get justice, and the fact that they have to water down the story to make it believable), i just think the focus on nancy and jonathan getting together hindered it a lot without adding a ton to the plot or their individual characters.

season 3

strengths

starcourt mall as a setting

while i don’t think the mall was utilized quite to its full potential (something i could make a separate post about if anyone’s interested), i do think that starcourt was a genius addition to the series. i’ve said this before, but building a new mall is a literal Perfect in-universe justification for a significant leap forward in fashion and aesthetics, and it provides a great location for characters to just... be characters. idk how else to articulate this i just think that the mall is a great setting to let people interact with each other and to bring people together who may not have been otherwise (i.e. scoops troop). not to mention how sick it was to see the mall get wrecked toward the end kdjncdkm like they were able to do so much more with the mall in terms of like The Finale than they could with just the byers house or the cabin or the school or even the lab. i love all the back tunnels they run through it’s such a fun like acknowledgement of how this glitzy eighties mall is just a real place where employees get shipments and take out the trash and shit idk it’s all about the perfect facade and what’s hidden what’s underneath what’s hiding in plain sight etc etc i’m just saying words now. anyway.

willingness to experiment and go against expectations

gay robin. neon aesthetics. giant fucking meat monster. i know some people hate both the neon and the meat monster but i personally think they were kind of amazing and like. yknow regardless of personal tastes i think it’s impossible to deny that s3 had a lot of incredible visuals, and they’re all visuals that just wouldn’t have been possible if the show were too afraid to stray from its s1 aesthetic. robin being canonically gay (and her resulting friendship with steve) and the season’s striking visuals are two things that most everyone (besides like homophobes skjncdknm) can agree were great, right? and they were both departures from where the show began and what we all expected!! so yeah i think while some of the experimentation in s3 wasn’t ideal it was also that experimentation that allowed for some of the season’s strongest elements to come about.

the hospital sequence (and the season’s action/horror scenes in general)

this one is fairly self-explanatory. while they may have underutilized the “body snatching” element of the season, the hospital sequence with nancy and jonathan fighting off their possessed bosses did an amazing job of building tension and creating a genuine sense of really intense and personal danger.

in general i think that s3 melded action and horror rather well, particularly in the sauna test, the hospital, and when the mindflayer busts through the roof of hop’s cabin. horror can come from many things, and in this case, st elicited horror largely from the feeling of helplessness, and it was really effective for me personally. i think it worked better for me than s1′s brand of horror because it doesn’t rely so much on a lack of knowledge or a sense of suspense that inevitable disappears upon a second viewing.

the body horror we got in s3 was also really fun! that’s it i just think all the blood and guts and slime were fun and i would like more of them. once again, the impacts of body horror are less dependent upon the viewer being in the dark or unsure as to what’s happening, and as such i think it tends to be a little more effective at eliciting reaction in the long term.

timing and mechanics of the battle of starcourt/finale

i think the battle of starcourt is just fucking awesome, and beyond that personal opinion, i think it’s the most high-stakes and intense finale of all three seasons, and this is for two main reasons! 1. el is out of commission, and 2. (almost) everyone is in the same cental location. this means that (almost) everyone is in danger all at once, and they are all working together at the same time to fight the same threat. s1/s2 have their groups more fragmented for the finales, and while i understand why in each case and i wouldn’t call either season’s finale necessarily weak, i do think the centralized nature of the s3 finale just Works on another level. in s1 and s2, large segments of the cast are already perfectly safe by the time el dispatches the primary threat. in s3, however, everybody save for dustin and erica is still in danger up until the last moment, and el is seemingly (you can def debate how much power she still had in her when she peeked into billy’s mind and whether the memory broke the mindflayer’s hold on him or if she was actually controlling him to some degree) completely vulnerable. this increases the tension and raises the stakes, making the finale a real crescendo to fortissimo as opposed to a series of little mezzo forte moments. i hope everyone reading this knows music idk how else to phrase that my brain is stupid.

emphasis on friendship and adolescence (but in a different way than s1/2)

this is definitely a controversial one but i think that s3 really did like... show a side of friendship that had been more or less unexplored thus far in the show. el and max were amazing, and i think it’s really nice that we got an opportunity to see the kids have some growing pains as well as see them support each other through Normal Adolescent Stuff like boyfriends and breakups instead of just like. death and trauma. this is maybe just a personal preference, but i think it can be really enlightening and provide a lot of depth when you get to see how characters respond to normal everyday conflict and not just how they respond to giant world-ending conflict!! letting el use her powers for goofy teenage shit like spying on boys and messing with mean girls at the mall is not only fun for her and the audience, but it also really emphasizes just how much those powers are a part of el, making it that much more devastating when she loses them at the end of the season.

weaknesses

tonal dissonance

so this is like. obvious. but it must still be said! i won’t go on and on about it since we all know this so i’ll try to like talk about it from an angle people don’t usually? anyway. it seems to me like they were maybe a little worried about s3 being too dark. while the choice to really lean into humor was definitely driven by the sorts of eighties teen films from which s3 drew inspiration (like fast times at ridgemont high), i think it was also done in an attempt to alleviate the more troubling implications of some events in the season, particularly the russian bunker plot. like, yeah, st can be incredibly dark, but if they’d played the whole “children being stuck inside of a foreign military base, tied up, tortured, and drugged” thing completely straight without the humorous elements that exist in canon, it had the potential to be like... disturbing on a new level. steve and robin don’t have powers like el yknow their kidnapping/torture doesn’t have any sci-fi elements to sorta soften the blow. they’re just innocent teenagers being brutalized and traumatized by grown men. so anyway yeah i think maybe the writers were concerned about this storyline coming off as too dark and they wanted it to be a little more whimsical but they ended up pushing way too hard in that direction and creating extreme dissonance at times. this goes for joyce/hopper/murray/alexei too, but to a lesser extent. i think the ridiculousness in that group felt a lot more like... realistic. but still.

newspaper plot

once again i feel like i don’t even need to say this skjdncmn we all know it was insane how the show basically ended up delivering the message “while misogyny is a serious problem poverty and classism are not” and i’ve said it on this blog a million times so i don’t need to repeat myself. i’ll focus on another weak point of this plot: the fact that it completely separates nancy and jonathan from everyone else. once again, the show’s preoccupation with j/ancy held them back! like... can you imagine a version of s3 where nancy and jonathan both worked in the mall? i have a lot of ideas about this possible au and like how the plot could play out differently if they worked in the mall but first of all it’s just more realistic, second of all it further utilizes the mall as a central setting, and third of all, it would bring everyone together. as it is in canon, nancy and jonathan were unnecessarily isolated from the rest of the group, and this isolation was detrimental to both of their characters. like, they only ever get to interact with each other! if they’d gotten summer jobs in the mall, they could have had more interactions with the kids/steve/robin, and they absolutely still could have had a similar argument! maybe in this case, nancy notices the rat thing (or something else odd) herself when taking out the trash behind the mall, and she wants jonathan to ditch work with her to check it out bc she thinks it may be related to the lab. jonathan doesn’t want to ditch work because he needs his job, nancy argues that they’re working shitty mall jobs anyway and who cares if they get fired, and we get more or less the same thing as s3 without the cartoonishly over-the-top misogyny. i mean honestly i think the rat shit could have been cut entirely it didn’t rly... accomplish much of anything. in my opinion. like imagine s3 without the rat plot you literally would not be missing anything except it would be more surprising when the dudes melted into goo at the hospital. so yeah i think it would have been better if nancy and jonathan had jobs at the mall, weren’t isolated from everybody else, and were maybe absorbed into the party’s plot or the scoops troop’s plot from very early on, allowing them to interact with more characters and have a less... dumb.... plot. like god splitting up nancy and jonathan between the party/scoops troop would have been So Much better i just. sdkjcnksdmn anyway yeah.

briefness of group reunion/separation of groups

remember in s2 at the beginning of “the gate,” where mike and hopper had a confrontation and max and el met for the first time and el hugged everyone and steve and nancy had their sad little moment together outside... where’s that energy? obviously the s2 reunion wasn’t that long either, but it made space for some significant emotional moments to take place. s3′s reunion had some hopper/el/mike resolution, but besides that... there was nothing, really. i just think that the whole group getting together in s3 was SO exciting and powerful the way they did it (with both the scoops troop and the adults having their own Big Moment reconnecting with team griswold family), but the emotional potential was more or less squandered.

i also think in s3 at times they were really stretching to keep everybody separated even though it made no sense. and like... in s1 the separation worked bc nobody else knew that (x group) was experiencing weird shit too, and beyond that, each group (as i mentioned in the s1 section) was sort of operating within their own genre and bringing something unique to the season. they’ve stopped doing that though! now, the groups aren’t separate bc each plot is tonally/structurally different, the groups are just separate bc... they need to be, because it’s a big ensemble cast and you can’t just have them all be together for a whole season or it would be way too difficult to coordinate things and keep the show dynamic. all this is to say that i’m excited for s4 because the location differences make it so there’s a Reason for each plot to be separate at the beginning, and i think that’ll work better.

general ridiculousness

i dont mean like i think it’s bad that they made jokes this is just me lumping in all the dumb shit like hopper not worrying about el and not wanting to check on the kids, him and joyce bickering long after they both know they and their children are in danger, max seemingly forgetting that billy is a racist abuser, etc etc. i think many of these are just a symptom of the show 1. trying desperately to keep the groups split up a certain way even though it may not make any sense, and 2. trying to fit into a certain genre/trope mold when their actual characters are more complex than the tropes they’re imitating. this is so fucking long already i am not gonna elaborate further rn but i trust u all know what i mean.

soooo... yeah, that’s about all! i mean it’s not all there are definitely many more things i could talk about and i know i focused sorta disproportionately on the teens which is my bad :/ but i’m done for now. thank you for asking, and apologies for the delay in responding!! i’m sure some people reading (if anyone read this far) will disagree with some of what i’ve said and that’s alright like i’m not The Authority on st or anything i’m just trying to talk about like my own thoughts yknow? so yeah luv u all i hope someone enjoyed reading this!!

#asks #em talks #lesbianrobin.canon #stranger things #if u actually read all this i love u and im sorry #these r just my opinions!! and im sure i misremembered some shit my brain is swiss cheese #i did my best tho

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bearslikedilfs · 3 years

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hello i have

✨hetalia sciency headcanons✨

so. you know about the space time continuum right? that its a real thing and not just in sci-fi? no? well today’s your lucky day!!!

basically, space and time are connected, and massive amounts of matter like planets, stars and black holes warp it.

like this. the graph lines are space-time.

Many people have headcanons that things around the nations-clothes, letters, objects, people- tend to last longer. this is why. the nations are an entire mass of history and culture and language and ideas all forced into a small human shape-sort of like a black hole, which is a mass of matter packed into a tight space. they are obviously not a black hole, but they warp space time similarly on a smaller scale. people that spend too long near them don’t age as quickly.

Second ! Nearly everything has a magnetic field. most of the time it is too weak to do much. for things like planets and such, they are so dense that it does matter a lot. in fact, the earths magnetic field is the only thing between us and a shit ton of solar wind that could fry every computer and electronics instantly. any way as stated before the nations are very dense like small black holes and they, too, have one. it’s not enough to screw with average electronics (usually) but sensitive scientific equipment will be affected by it. Alfreds presence had to be accounted for during his time at nasa. none of the nations are allowed anywhere within 50 miles of the Cern Large Hadron Collider bc we don’t want any escaped atomic particles driven off course by a personification of a country.

there is also such a thing as a friendliness field. all it does is make their own citizens only be more likely to help them out or be nice to them. they cannot really consciously control it, nor make it go away. it doesn’t mind control anyone either-all it does is make it more likely they’ll be friendly. ppl are still free to think, “hmm that man seems friendly but idk. still sus.” some nations think its an evolutionary defense mechanism because they die so often.

i have a personal headcanon that while they cannot really consciously control the magnetic field they emanate, nor the friendliness field, they all have a Presence. The Presence they can control, and it’s basically just the entire legacy of a nation staring you in the face - centuries of every event, idea, person that made them them. among nations, shoving it at someone is rude. it’s considered aggressive, like two deer locking horns. if a nation does it to a human, that human better deserve it, and it better not be for long, because exposure to centuries of memories is not good for human brains.

the Northern Lights are also created by the earths field! the solar wind goes around the earths magnetic field, but at the poles where it emanates from, some solar wind gets in and interacts with the magnetic fields to make the northern lights. (and the southern lights). imagine the cold war, russia and america are glaring at each other, locking metaphorical horns with their Presences, and literal sparks fly, as the interaction between their Presences creates something akin to the northern lights.

theres a not as common headcanon that they weigh more than the average human. I agree with it. it scientifically goes along with the other things on here. most of their “density” is in things not physical- it’s mostly the “weight” of centuries of history, and memories, and culture, and ideas. however, they do weigh quite a bit more than a human of similar height/weight would. not too much that several dedicated people couldn’t move them, but enough that you’d probably need a couple people to move them.

all of these are somewhat connected. i said that the friendliness field and magnetic field are not consciously controlled, however, they can be unconsciously triggered. like when they get pissed off, for example. they don’t completely lose it often but when they do you know. you will say something assholish and suddenly the lights flicker from the magnetic field strengthening, the walls groan as the wood or stone or metal bow ever so slightly towards them, the floor creaks under their feet as their density increases and the nails in the floorboards bend slightly, any countrymen of theirs nearby feel an urge to back them up, the clocks and electronics skip a beat, and you are now feeling extremely claustrophobic under the weight of several hundreds of years of history snd culture.

Also the older you get as a nation the more control you have over it. China is old af and his presence is just so strong you could feel it without him trying. he’s also got tricks up his sleeve and is capable of increasing his friendliness field or magnetic field a little bit, consciously. Also imagine china increasing his magnetic field in order to summon a metal weapon from across the room. his magnetic field probably really strong anyway, from the density of literally millenia of history and culture.

This is sort of like the nations 6 sense. they can tell what nation it is based on the “feel” of it (as long as they already know the nation) and its likely how they find each other. i don’t think the “range” is that big- probably something within 10 miles when not on their home territory. when on home ground though, they can feel the presence of another nation anywhere in it.

anyway!! im sure there’s more y’all can do with this. i hope the explanation was understandable. if not feel free to send asks.

#hetalia #hetalia headcanons #shithole-state

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redrobin-detective · 3 years

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Holding myself back from being defensive bc AF is my favorite mediocre sci-fi soap opera I loved as a kid but I think it best to not go in with the expectation Ben have the same loud character as he does is OS or OV. Honestly OV and AF to me feel like two different takes on what an older Ben would be like, one where he’s more matured and calmed down over the years and one where he has the same spunk but is also kinda stuck and doesn’t know how to grow up or even if he wants to grow up.

AF is also written with a different tone then the other series and takes itself more seriously for better or for worse. Ben is still Ben and pulls a lot of the same stupid stunts it’s just recontextualized in a more grounded context. It’s honestly written more like a dc cartoon since it was lead by Dwayne McDuffy who was also a dc writer

Really I just advice watching AF without expecting Ben to be like OV Ben and you’ll like it more. I went into OV expecting Ben to be AF Ben and because of that it took me a while to warm up to that series, but eventually I did and I hope you also find something you like about AF

I would first off like to apologize because when I started making metas on AF I told myself I wouldn't dunk on it bc I know how beloved it is and, as usual, my big mouth got away from me. The more I reflect on the series the more I appreciate it and enjoy but it still doesn't click the way OV did for me. I don't know, I have a million and one issues with OV but I simply could not stop watching it. The characters and the world and everything just really hooked me.

I sure wish OV Ben had some of AF Ben's maturity, his patience, open kindness and ability to relate and work with most beings. I wish OV had kept the original backstory on Kevin and the Plumber's kids. AF Vilgax was not only more interesting than OV and even the OS but was also genuinely a threat.

I do like the series, it's not my favorite of the Ben 10's an it doesn't have to be but I can appreciate it none the less. I really shouldn't have been dissing it at the beginning but I guess I was having whiplash having just come off 8 seasons of OV Ben being manic and stupid and adorkable. I do still feel that early AF was a bit bland, as if they didn't quite know what to do with his character but I really do appreciate the attempt to look at the Ben 10 universe from a more grounded perspective. It's a good show and I plan to continue it, even if I am simply cherry picking episodes I find interesting.

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rabbitcruiser · 1 year

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National Read a Book Day

Learn about National Read a Book Day

You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.

History of National Read a Book Day

National Read a Book Day Timeline

4000 BC Writing begins in Mesopotamia

With some rudimentary squiggles and lines that represent pictures of animals, marks are made on clay that are the first parts of writing.

Akkadian Princess and High Priestess Enheduanna writes hymns and signs her name on the clay tablets. These and other early texts are meant to be read out loud.

7th Century BC First organized library is established

In the Ancient Middle East, an Assyrian ruler in Nineveh creates a collection of more than 30,000 cruciform tablets.

1450 Gutenberg invents the printing press

An invention that changed everything for education is developed as a working prototype in Germany by Gutenberg. It is ready for commercial use in just a few more years.

1800s-1900s Literacy rates rise

As the Industrial Revolution brings an increase of accessibility to books, the ability to read also increases for the common person.

How to celebrate National Read a Book Day

Taking the opportunity to enjoy some time out of the day to relax and read is good for the soul and the mind.

So there you have it: some of the different ways that you can celebrate National Read a Book Day. Of course, the best way to celebrate this day is by grabbing a good book and getting lost in it.

National Read a Book Day FAQs

When is National Read a Book Day?

National Read a Book Day comes every year on September 6 when people set aside other activities and enjoy the beauty of reading a good, old-fashioned book.

How to Read a Book online?

What is National Read a Book Day?

How to celebrate National Read a Book Day?

Whether going to a library, starting a book club, donating a book or buying one, this is the day to enjoy everything that has to do with reading and sharing a book.

How was the first book printed?

The first books were originally written by hand, then block printing was used in China in the Tang Dynasty, followed by the printing press that came into commercial use in 1450.

Source

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