Friday Five

1. What is your native language?

English (and it took me at least six to seven years to figure that one out, actually maybe fifteen to twenty, give or take).

I think I learned how to draw and paint first?

2. Do you speak any other languages? Which ones?

No. I tried. For seven years I tried to learn how to speak French. Even went to France for immersion - for about two months, living with a French family. (Except they spoke a kind of Pastoral French, be like coming to the US to learn to speak English, but ending up in New Orleans? Or Texas? Or going to Britain to speak English, and ending up in either Scotland or Wales?)

What I learned was how to figure out what someone was saying through body language and convey what I was saying through body language, and not worry that much about the language. It's a really good skill to have by the way. Has served me well in so many situations. Also how to figure it out by context.


3. How difficult is it for you to learn or understand new languages?

Almost impossible. I've decided facility with language is in your DNA, this is NOT a learned skill - it's a gift. Being able to learn languages easily is kind of like being able to draw a person from memory, or sing beautifully without vocal lessons, or do a cartwheel.

I've proof. ( Read more... )

Weird thing about languages? People seem to assume if they can easily learn it everyone can? If everyone could easily learn languages - life would be a lot easier than it currently is and lot less miscommunication.

4. If you were going to study a new foreign language, which would you want to learn?

Spanish - it's the most widely spoken outside of English in the US. Sorry, folks, it is. And the easiest to learn.


5. How are you at reading subtitles in foreign films?

Pretty good. But it can be headache inducing in animation. It's actually best in live action, and usually something without too much dialogue.

ETA: figured out what causes double posting - if you hit the back button and fix a post, it will double post it, because the other post posts, and by hitting the back button you are essentially creating a copy and fixing that instead. So when you post it and want to edit - always hit "edit" don't push the back button.

Anti-Shipping and Online Discourse in and outside fandoms

Rather loved this Post - entitled Anti-Shipping as Hate.

Actually all of it. I think most people should probably read it. It kind of underlines the issues that I've had in various fandoms with the "anti-shippers" or morally holier-than-thous, who felt the need to attack myself and others for either shipping or loving fictional storylines or character that they despised or felt were morally repugnant.

I think some of the difficulty is a lot of people tend to take a morally superior attitude, or feel they are taking the moral higher ground and need to "educate" someone else to see things their way. But the difficulty with that - is we're all flawed, with various quirks. And whose to say what the moral higher ground actually is? It's a sliding scale and often the lines are blurred. And in assuming it - the individual could easily be falling into the role of cyberbully without realizing it? Just because someone loves a messy fictional relationship or character or television series, does not mean they support or like that behavior in actuality. I met someone who loved The Bachelor (which I find morally repugnant) because they liked watching people who were worse off than they were. (They stated at least I'm not like that.) We may love to watch or read abusive relationships in fiction, but steer clear of those in reality and be lucky enough to never have experienced them. While others may have or have had abusive relationships in reality and steer clear of them in fiction, often that's why they steer clear, it triggers them.

Example? I steered clear of the television comedy series The Office, because I'd experienced something similar in reality. While someone else loved it and the lead, because they either never had or experienced it very differently than I had.

The internet, specifically some social media platforms - have a tendency to bring out the worst in people. Twitter (Xitter) is set up as a marketing platform - where a negative tweet will be retweeted and quoted across it in seconds. It actually is set up for negative marketing to thrive. It wants controversy and battles. Dreamwidth isn't set up that way - it's more of an interactive correspondence site, and kind of pushes against that behavior, it has monitoring safeguards in place. We can control who and what we see on this platform far better than others. The old Voy users groups were also kind of set against it, since too many posts broke those sites, and they had headings and ways you could avoid the trolls easily. And were well monitored. But, Tumblr, Twitter, Bluesky, and Facebook - don't have those safeguards or not to the same extent. Facebook has gotten better at least.

Bullying others who do not share our opinions or views brings out the worst in all of us, I think. Often, when emotions get involved, instead of being curious, we get into pushing our own view onto someone else, or being right or validating that view or experience. I'm embarrassed to admit that I've certainly been guilty of that in the past. It's a remarkably easy trap to fall into.

I've learned (the hard way) that you cannot control another person's perspective on things or even change it. Why should they listen to me? Or anyone online for that matter? That perspective has been built over timeand was developed by factors outside of my understanding, knowledge or experience, just as mine was outside of theirs. And their experience is as valid as mine. And, as I keep reminding myself, it's actually a miracle when our perspectives agree or are on the same page.

Art, Television, Cartoons and Movies...

1. Well, I submitted pandemic sunflower to the Brooklyn Art Museum Open Admission site. It's not really a contest - or it is - but the prize is being exhibited in the museum with a lot of other artists and having your work shown.
( Read more... )

I'm proud of myself for submitting it. It's the first work of art that I've submitted to an exhibition in a very very long time, since I was a kid, actually.

2. Television

* Been binge-watching Resident Alien on Netflix, starring Alan Tudyk, there's two seasons of it available. Made it through about six episodes. They are about thirty minutes each and being Netflix, when one ends, the next one begins with barely a credits roll.

Set-up? ( vague spoilers - except all happen in first two episodes )

Think fish out of water tale such as Northern Exposure - except the fish out of water is an alien trying to destroy the human race, and failing miserably at it.

It's a comedy.

Started on Syfy, now on Netflix as well. Much easier to watch on Netflix.

* X-men '97 - Disney + - this is a reboot of the 1990-1996 Fox X-men Animated Series. I saw about two or three seasons of the 90s series back in the 90s. And it's really when the X-men became mainstream. Most people know about the X-men from the Fox 1990s series. (Ugh). The Fox 1990s series is not bad, it's actually better if you've not read the comics first. If you've read the comics first and remember them well - it will irritate you. The animation of the Fox 1990s series is on the clunky side (it was good in the 1990s however), but better than most cartoons. And the dialogue on the cheesy side. Cyclops is written kind of stiffly and not well at all. He's boring in the 90s series, the most interesting characters in the series are Rogue, Storm and Wolverine, Jean is kind of dull and poorly developed, as is Cyclops and Jubliee. Gambit is kind of edgy and creepy. That's the 1990s cartoon.

The 2024 reboot - or X-men '97 which was written and created by the (recently fired) Beau DeMayo is actually pretty good. And a vast improvement over the original. It has two episodes that have dropped. And it focuses on the late 1970s/early 1980s comics but - with big changes. Scott/Cyclops is written a tad better, as is Jean, Wolverine, Storm, Rogue, Gambit, Jubliee, etc. And they've brought back Morph. Xavier is gone, and Magneto is taking over.

What's odd is they fired the creator, and he's left social media entirely. Hasn't posted since the firing in early March, two weeks before the premiere.

No one knows why. Except he was posting semi nude pictures of himself - posing on Xitter - and well, he's Black and Gay. And it is Disney. But I'm hoping they had a better reason and guessing it was a legal one? No one knows, and no one is happy about it. The first two episodes were done well.
All the characters were written and drawn better, as were the action sequences.

On Beau DeMayo Firing and Where Things Currently Stand

Marvel is working towards rebooting the X-men films, and doing that through a reboot of the animated series, and the comic series - the X-men is its most popular flagship series, since it has the most diverse characters and the most diversified audience and ahem, appeals to women, LGBTA, trans, and not just nerdy heterosexual cisgendered fanboys.

And I foresee a Bridgerton rewatch in my future. Also the 3 Body Problem is on Netflix.

3. Almost forgot... Cillian Murphy forms a new production Company, Big Things Films

" EXCLUSIVE: Cillian Murphy, fresh off of the massive global success of Oppenheimer — and as he gets ready to debut Small Things Like These (in which he stars and he produced) as the opening-night gala of the Berlin Film Festival next week — has set his next starring and producing gig with Steve.

This adaptation of Max Porter’s novel Shy also officially launches Murphy’s production company, Big Things Films, with longtime collaborator Alan Moloney."

The article contains a discussion with Cillian and his producing partner.
Also Cillian is starting filming on a Peaky Blinders movie for Netflix in September.

This is the team that did Breakfast on Pluto, Intermission and Delingquent Season.

" An independent, story-driven company, Big Things was initially created to produce Small Things Like These, and aims to collaborate with singular filmmakers, writers, actors and directors, both new and established, who have something to say and are passionate about what they do. Big Things will collaborate with like-minded financiers, studios, distributors and streamers in both film and television.

The company will seek material in which Murphy will act, but not exclusively.

Projects will be designed to provoke, inspire and explore themes that take audiences to places that can sometimes be uncomfortable, but more often reveal core truths about who we are, regardless of genre or format, the partners say.

Meanwhile, Berlinale opener Small Things Like These is based on the Booker Prize-shortlisted novel by Claire Keegan with a screenplay by Enda Walsh. Murphy, Eileen Walsh and Emily Watson star in the story which takes place over Christmas 1985, when devoted father Bill Furlong (Murphy) discovers the startling secrets being kept by the convent in his town, and some shocking truths about his own life as well. "

So good news for Cillian Murphy fans.

Ryan Gosling is starring in Project Hail Mary - the Andy Weir novel adaptation, which I will most likely skip, because it has a friendly alien spider race in it. I can handle that in a book, I cannot handle looking at alien spiders on screen.

Sigh, it's that time again - off to bed.