#rachel and me talking about avatar (i hate it and it's THE movie for her) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

surveys-at-your-service · 3 years

Text

Surveys #417-419

Been slacking on posting these, so here’s like three surveys over the past few days divided up. I just don’t feel like posting them individually. Beware, it’s a long post, haha.

Do you believe that animals don’t have souls? I lean towards the idea that they, at least more complex species with actual sentience, do in some way. It's hard to imagine like, a fly having a soul, but it's a nice thought. You could NEVER convince me some don't, though, like my late dog Teddy, Sara's old chameleon Jem, and I could go on and on. Have you ever not been able to swallow pills? No, I've always been able to. If you HAD to change your first name, what would you change it to? Maybe like, Quinn. Something you don't hear a lot, for sure. Something more memorable. What are your thoughts on orange soda? Orange cream soda is BOMB. Man, been so long since I've had that stuff... Are you good with children and/or animals? Don't mean to brag, but people say I'm like a magician with animals. No matter what it is, I bond with it. Children, not so much. I'm awkward around them. Who in your life makes you smile the most? My cat, ha ha. If you were cremated, where would you want your ashes to be placed? Hm. Maybe high up in the mountains or in the Kalahari Desert. Do you plan on going to your high school’s reunion? No. I'm pretty sure I'd shatter from memories just entering the building. Would you want revenge on someone if they killed someone special to you? Or would you find it in your heart to forgive? "Forgive" my ass. They'd better get what's coming to them, even if I've gotta be the person to deliver it. Is there someone you are dying to see? More than I think anyone could possibly know. But it's probably better if I never do. Could you picture yourself getting married and having kids? Married, yes. Having kids, no. I could only picture that in one phase of my life, but like I called it: a phase. I should never be a mother, nor do I want to be one to begin with, so yeah, no kids for me. Do you like to take walks? If my legs were actually worth a shit, yes, I would, if it's in a nature-filled area. What are you listening to at this moment in time? "Thoughts & Prayers" by Motionless In White. Did you ever kiss someone with a tattoo? No. Could you say something good about the last person you kissed? She's very resilient. Why are you single? Because 1.) I'm a very unappealing example of an adult, 2.) I'm not exactly very attractive, and 3.) I'm basically a hermit, so I don't meet people. Do you get jealous if your boyfriend hugs another girl? Hypothetically, in almost any case, I wouldn't. My imaginary boyfriend can have female friends. But I'll admit if it was like, an ex-girlfriend or something and it was a seriously intense hug, I might. Is there something that happened in your past you hate talking about? Yes, but I mean, who doesn't. Have you ever been completely alone with a boy in his room? You make this sound so scandalous lmao. Yes, plenty of times. I dated a dude and briefly lived with him for three and a half years. Do you hate the person you fell hardest for? No. Who was the last person that you cried in front of? I'm sure it was Mom. Is it hard for you to be “just friends” with the opposite sex? Nah. Do you remember every single person that you’ve kissed? Yeah. Do you believe that the world will actually end? Humanity, oh yeah. The planet itself, given the infinite nature of the universe, also yes. At SOME point, even if it's zillions of years down the line, Earth is gonna get fucked by something. Are you socially awkward? I am the literal avatar of "socially awkward." Would you rather watch a comedy movie or horror movie? Horror. Who is your favorite actor/actress? MARK IS A FUCKIN' ACTOR, Y'ALL. Are you satisfied with your gender? Yeah. Are you good at admitting your problems? HA! Yeah. ezpz Have you ever had a hangover? No, never been drunk to begin with. Do you know any strippers? No. How many times have you dyed your hair? I ain't counting. What is something that reminds you of your childhood? Dinosaurs. Do you think you eat healthy? I try to. I have my bad days, though. Are you sick quite often or hardly at all? My immune system is the fucking MVP. I am just about never, ever sick. Has anyone suspected you of being a different sexuality? Yes. Do you like chocolate or vanilla cake more? Chocolate, duh. Does it bother you to have blood drawn or not so much? Nah, no biggie. Has your cell phone ever rung in class? Omg no, I woulda been mortified. Have you ever tried opening your eyes under water? Yeah, as a kid. Would you rather have a cat or a dog? I prefer cats. Have you ever been admitted to the hospital? Like... six times, I wanna say. What would you say is your favorite type of flower? Orchids, but I also love dahlias. I've actually noticed that I've really had a greater "thing" for flowers lately. Like don't get me wrong, I've always loved flowers very much, but I've just found myself more drawn to them than usual, especially when taking the daily hour ride to the TMS office. Do you watch Toddlers and Tiaras? FUCK no. That show disgusts and angers me so much. If someone asked you to go to war today, what would you say? Yeah, no. Funny joke. I couldn't go anyway due to mental health issues and a suicidal history. Do you own an old vintage typewriter? We used to when I was little. I have no idea what happened to it, though?? Hell, maybe we still have it somewhere, but I doubt that. Do you like or hate the smell of fish? Ew, does ANYONE like the smell of fish??? Have you ever read any of John Green’s books? I got a few pages into The Fault in Our Stars, but stopped for no real reason. I didn't not like it or anything, I was just still in my "I don't read" episode. Are you a protective person? VERY. I'm a fucking guard dog over those I love most. Are you a fan of penguins? Yeah, they're cute. I especially think emperor penguins are very majestic. Have you ever met your favorite author? I don’t have a favorite author. Did you get your mom or dad’s eyes? Neither's. I think my maternal grandpa had blue eyes, though? I'm not sure at all, though. When was the last time someone bought you flowers? Not sure. Has there ever been a murder in your town? "A" murder? Thems is rookie numbers for my neck of the woods, fella. This place is known for crime, and that includes murder. When falling asleep, do you ever feel like you stopped breathing? Well, I have seriously severe sleep apnea, so... but the diagnosis came as a surprise to me, because I never DID think this. But sure enough, did a sleep study, and in just one hour's time, I stopped breathing like what, 30 times? What's the last thing that scared the hell out of you? Stupid drivers. Do you have any life-changing plans within the next 6 months? I guess getting a job could be pretty life-changing. As of right now, how do you feel about your future? I'm very, very scared. Who is the last person you ran into unexpectedly? Hm, I dunno. Where does your grandma live? Both of mine are dead, but my paternal grandmother lived in Michigan, while my maternal one technically lived in Florida, but stayed in New York with her son's family a whole lot. I don't really know where she stayed more. Do you know how to read music? Not anymore. Does the song you’re currently listening to remind you of anyone special? Not so much the song, but the band. Motionless In White is one of his all-time favorites, so I can't listen to them without thinking of Jason. Sucks because they've been becoming one of MY favorites, too, so I listen to them a lot. If the person who has hurt you the most, said they were in love with you, would you believe them? I'd tell him he was in a love with a person who no longer exists. It's impossible for him to be in love with me now when he doesn't know how much I've changed. If Facebook made you pay would you still use it? Ha, no. Have you ever been recorded on film without your permission? Not that I know of? Tell me about your last boyfriend? He's a wonderful person. He's been there for me without fail since we became friends in high school band, and he is SO fucking funny. He's always cared a lot about me, and I care a lot about him, just not in the same way he does me. He's like my big brother. Are your parents racist? My dad definitely is. What is your least favorite subject in school? Math and economics both sucked. Have you ever been involved in a custody battle before? Almost certain no. I'm pretty sure Dad didn't fight for custody at all, but it could've been something Mom just never told me. Have you ever babysat a newborn baby before? NOOOOOOOOOOOOO. I NEVER could. Do you have any siblings you neglect? .-. As a kid, did you ever go to camp? I went to Vacation Bible School, if that counts. Did your parents ever let you play in the pits of those multicolored balls? Yeah, until that big news story about a dirty needle pricking a child. Have any of your siblings ever had a crush on your significant other? Not to my knowledge. I highly doubt it. What do you usually order at Taco Bell, if you go there? Cheese quesadilla with fiesta potatoes. Rarely a pair of those cinnamon ball thingies. Ever consider a sex change? Nah. Do you eat whip cream straight out of the can? EW no. I hate the texture of whipped cream. What do you think of popcorn? Loooove. Have you ever dated any of your friends’ ex? No. Well, it's funny, Rachel (both Juan's and Jason's ex) and I are friends now, but definitely weren't at the time of us being together. Have you ever gone out with someone even though one of your friends liked that person first? If yes, did you feel bad? If no, were you tempted to? No. Would you rather be a rich musician, or a rich actor? Musician. What was the last charity you donated to? I don't recall. Did you like to collect frogspawn as a kid? I've told the "my friends and I saved hundreds of tadpoles" story enough times, so for this question, I'll just talk about when I would go fishing with Dad as a kid. Back then, if I got bored of actually fishing, I would walk along the riverbank and try to catch tadpoles and minnows in my hands. It was soooo fun to Kid Brittany. Do you walk fast or slow? I walk pretty damn slow. Can you juggle with more than two items? I can't juggle, period. Do you like jalapenos? Yeah! Do you like kiwis? Yessss, I love kiwi! Does anyone in your family go deer or bird hunting? Who is it anyway? I don't know if she still does, but my little sister used to go deer hunting with a friend.

Are you saving up for anything right now? What? Yeah, my pet snake's 40 gallon terrarium. What sort of things do you have bookmarked in your internet browser? It's quite diverse, but I think I mostly have templates for specific character profiles. Have you ever snuck in to a theater/dance/bar etc? No, I'm a good noodle. If given the chance, would you go to Ireland? Certainly! It's beautiful there. If you have a cat, does it ever “converse” with you? Oh, ABSOLUTELY. When I talk to him, he sure does try to answer me and it's the cutest thing, ha ha. Have you ever tried those electric toothbrushes? Yeah, that’s what I use. Has anyone told you that they wanted to marry you/were planning on it/etc? Yeah, guess he changed his mind. Name one of your ex’s mother’s names? Virginia. Does your favorite song have a meaning? BIG TIME. Have you ever written or received a suicide note? I've written one. .-. What is the worst thing a child has ever done to you while you were babysitting? When I was changing her diaper, she got up and ran around naked in the house. ;-; Do you own a nightgown? No. If you could get any pet right now, what would you get? i. want. my. tarantula. Have you ever actually been stuffed into a locker? No. That is just such a TV trope that I've never even heard of happening irl. Do you/did you decorate the inside of your locker at school with stuff? I only had a locker in middle school, and I believe I didn't. I didn't want one in HS. What’s the coolest thing you’ve made with Legos? I was never a Legos kid; I played with Lincoln Logs. Do you want to get pregnant right now? Fuck no, man. Or ever. Have you ever housed a friend for a long period of time because they had no place to live? No. If you have a favorite comedian, have they ever been in a movie? I don't have one, really. Are there any books you want to read? Besides the series I'm reading, I want to read The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, but idk if I'll ever get to it, really. If you have younger siblings, are you very protective of them? We don't have a close relationship, but I am nevertheless. If you have older siblings, are they very protective of you? Not really, it seems. First letter of the names of everyone you have kissed? J, T, D, S. Do you like going to school sports games? No, I hated it. When Ash was a cheerleader, Mom made me go, and I was never happy about it. Have you ever worn your boyfriend’s clothes? An ex-boyfriend's, yeah. Did you get into your mom’s makeup when you were a kid? I don't think I did? Do you want anything pierced? Ugh, a lot of places. The last time you washed your hair, did you use conditioner? I never do. Has your partner ever accused you of cheating when you actually didn’t? I've never been accused of cheating. Has anyone ever called you stuck-up? No. I'm quite the opposite. Have you been diagnosed with any mental disorders? Too many, really. What are you doing this summer? Nada. Do you still watch MTV? I never did. Have you ever spent the night with the last person you kissed? Yes. What’s the dress code for your job? Do you like it? I'm unemployed. Does your job allow piercings or tattoos? ^, and this might sound stupid, but I wouldn't work at a job that didn't. Especially tattoos. No job is stopping me from doing things that improve my self-esteem and body image, particularly when I LOATHE my body. If a little bit of art makes me feel better about myself? Nobody is stopping me. What are some trends you dislike that everyone seems to love? "Crocs. Whyyyy?" <<<< THIS. First people hated them, now they love them??? They're hideous as shit. If you got married and then got divorced, would you want to re-marry? I don't really know. How often do you use lotion? Not NEARLY enough for someone with skin as dry as mine. Do you donate your old stuff to Goodwill? If so, what was the last thing you donated? Yeah. Mom recently brought some old toys, I think? How weight conscious are you? You have no fucking idea. Rent a movie or go see one in theaters? I prefer going to a theater. I enjoy the experience. What’s the biggest personality trait turn-off for a potential partner? Probably being an explosive/volatile person. I can't with that. Would you ever go on a birth control pill? I already am to regulate my period and tame the cramps. And if I was sexually active, I absolutely would want to be on it. What's your favorite late night tv show? I don’t have one. At high school do or did you participate in Spirit Week? No. Do you have a favorite vocalist? Who? Queen's Freddie Mercury will probably always top the list. If you have a favorite photographer, can you describe their work? I don't have a favorite photographer. Surprisingly. Are sex and sexual activities something you enjoy? If it's with someone I'm in love with and am in the mood, sure. What is one aspect of your life that did not turn out as you expected? I did NOT expect to reach 25 like... *gestures at self* this. What is one thing stopping you from becoming a veterinarian? I could never handle euthanizing pets and watching the families' hearts break. How long have you lived in the house you live in? Not even a year. Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder? I'm definitely sadder. Especially today. Do you like Subway? I do. Have you ever seen a volcano? No. Have you ever found a spider on your bed? Yes. It's the scariest shit when one skitters across your blanket, because like, you LEAST expect it to happen in the comfort of your own bed. Are you satisfied with the way your life is right now? Not even remotely, if I'm being honest. I'm at a real low. When was the last time you ate at Burger King? Years ago, when I was a vegetarian and went there for the veggie burger. How often do you cry? lol a lot Ever had a crush on a teacher? No. Can you wire a plug? ... I don't even know what you mean by "wire a plug," so obviously no lmfao. Where were you when you got your first period? Well I think I actually *started* at school, but I noticed when I got home. Can you drive? I mean I'm capable, but I'm an incredibly anxious, overly passive, and just generally terrified driver. I'm so scared of when I finally get new glasses and therefore a new permit... but I have to get used to driving. Living where I do, public transportation is very, very limited, and I just can't have people driving me places the rest of my life. Exercise or healthy eating? I sadly hate exercising SO much. I'd rather eat healthy. Did you play Red Rover when you were a child? Yeah. Are you more attracted to men or women? This can actually vary with time, which I originally thought was weird but is apparently normal for some bisexual individuals. There are spans where I feel more sexual attraction to men, and then other times women. Has anyone ever called you rich? God no, I am so far from it. What makes you feel beautiful? Nothing. Are you considered a very sensitive person? I'm way too sensitive for my own good. Have you ever told someone you never wanted to speak to them again? Yes, my dad. I regret that letter I sent him so, so much. I honestly don't know how he can treat me with so much love after the shit I said. If you could watch any TV series right now, what would it be? I am... astonishingly behind on Meerkat Manor: Rise of the Dynasty. I know, seriously incredible. I just don't watch TV, man. It's strange, I'm into the show, of course I am, I just... don't like sitting myself in front of a television and purely watching it. I'll catch up, though. Do you grind your teeth, and if so, why do you do it? No. But it's not like people have a reason they grind their teeth... they just do. Do you feel the need to rant about anything right now? If so, go for it. I could, but I'm not going to. It'll just upset me. Do you have a friend named Nick? What’s his favourite food? My sister's husband's name is Nick, but he is definitely not my friend. I can't stand his bigoted, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, racist ass. I don't know or care what his favorite food is. What are you listening to? I'm re-watching Gab and Sinow play Resident Evil 5. People can say all they want about RE5, but I love it. Do you prefer waffles or pancakes? Waffles, but only if they're still soft enough to not be considered crunchy. I prefer them because I can put peanut butter on them, and the grooves catch the syrup instead of just absorbing it all like pancakes. Do you prefer non-diet or diet soda? I don't/can't drink diet sodas because the artificial sweetener gives me a KILLER headache. Are you craving anything right now? You guys have no idea how badly I want Taco Bell for whatever reason. Which word did you say first, mama or dada? The latter. What was your first pet’s name? So, there's three answers to this. I was born into the family while we had a collie named Trigger, but I have absolutely zero memory of her. She passed when I was too young. Our first family pet that I clearly remember was Chance, our rescued cat. My first *personal* pet was either a guinea pig named Squeak or Chinese water dragon named Shadow. I can't remember who came first. Who was your best friend in elementary? It changed with the years, but I can say the three biggies were Brianna, Kim, and Quiata. Who was your favorite teacher in high school? Probably Coach Collie. He was so wise, kind, funny... He was all-around just wonderful and taught so many life lessons. When you go to a restaurant, do you have a go-to dish? Always. What is the best part of your most ordinary day? Waking up and doing my first sweep of the Internet before I get bored outta my fucking senses. Do you read any web comics? No.

Do you drink bottled water? Yeah, but like any water, it has to be COLD. Not room temperature. Not a tad chilly. I mean cooooold. When did you last use a straw? Earlier. I have a metal straw I use to drink water with because I drink faster through a straw, and with it being water, of course I want to try to drink as much as I can when I actually choose to drink water. Have you ever tackled someone to the ground? No. Do you know anyone who lies to make themselves look more interesting? My former best friend did that. She was an online friend, so it made it easy. I finally caught on and called her out on it, and then she just totally dipped. Do you like to sing? Not that much, honestly. Like sometimes I feel like it, sure, but not frequently. Are your parents in good health? No, not really. Have you ever been a caregiver to a sick/disabled relative? No. I feel bad saying it, but I know I never could be. I could NOT clean another human being. It's one of the bajillion reasons I'm not having kids. Do you like to take naps during the day? "Like" isn't the right word. I just... need to. Most days, there is NO way I can make it 'til night without one. What movie was your favorite to see in the movie theater? Even though it was sincerely a sucky movie, I really enjoyed watching Silent Hill: Revelation because I saw the 3D version, plus the hype over my favorite franchise getting a new movie was just very exciting. Favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle character? I was never into that. Ever watched The Blair Witch Project? Yes, and I positively adore it. I genuinely think it's a genius horror movie, never showing, but telling through other methods. Have a favorite AC/DC song? Probably "You Shook Me All Night Long." Are you good at selling candy for those fundraiser things? Omg nooooo I HATED doing that shit, especially when some amount of sales were like, required for whatever bullshit reason. I hate hate hate advertising to people. My parents always bought them instead. Have you ever had a crush on someone too old for you? No. Well, besides James Hetfield, ha ha. What's your favorite Dr. Suess quote? I don't know enough quotes to have one. If you were to have wings, what would you want them to look like? Dark and dragon-esque with lots of rips and tears in them... but not enough to stop me from flying, ha ha. Have you ever broken up with someone to find you want them back later? No. Has anyone ever dared you to eat a chili pepper? Did you do it? No. Have you ever tried Thai food? No. Have you ever watched Avatar? The TV show, not the movie. I've seen I think one season with Sara so far? I actually quite enjoy it. What's your cellphone's signature for text? WOW this survey is ancient. If you smoke marijuana, what is your preferred or typical method? I don't smoke it. Do you often take painkillers? I dunno about "often," but headaches to the point I take something aren't rare for me. Do you wish you were in a relationship? I mean yes, but I know it's for the better I'm not. Have you ever been to the ER? Many times. Do you ever feel guilty eating meat? I feel extremely guilty. I try not to think about it. Where have you lived for the most part of your life? Eastern NC. How old are you? 25. What are you listening to at the moment? Powerwolf came out with a new album, so I've been bingeing the shit out of some songs, ha ha. Right now it's "Blood For Blood." Do you watch WWE Raw? Ew, no. I have NEVER gotten the appeal of wrestling. Just like... why????? Do you dye your hair? Nowhere near regularly. :/ I haven't had it dyed in a very long time, and I hate it. I love colored hair. We just can't afford that expense on something so little. My hair does NOT take dye easily, so we have to have a professional do it, and that isn't exactly cheap. Have you ever lived in a different country that the one you’re living in? No. Which of your parents will you see next? I live with my mother, so. Have you fallen asleep in school? Not in class, no. In college when I would be in the library between classes, though, I've dozed before. Have you ever been hospitalized? Yes, but not for physical issues. Do you make fun of obese people? You're talking to someone who is. So obviously no, and you're a piece of fucking shit if you do. Do you have an innie or an outtie? Innie. Have you ever tried to headbang? No. Even as a metalhead, I don't get it, man. You're asking for a headache. Do you own any Converse? What do you think of them? I have a few and like them. Have you ever started a rumor? No. Have you ever been in a position of authority? I mean, I'm an admin on two sites, so I guess? Were your ancestors royalty? Yeah, I'm related to one of the Queen Victorias, I believe. I just know she had a thing for beheading people, ha ha. What do you like on your pasta/noodles? Sauce, butter, grated cheese, etc.? Just tomato sauce and meatballs, really. Who is the most ungrateful person you know? What makes them this way? My fucking ex-best friend. You could never, ever give her enough and she just... blegh. She was so fucking ungrateful for everything people did for her. It was just never enough. Do you like cherry Pepsi? I like cherry Coke. I don't like Pepsi. Have you ever held an uncommon pet before (ex: mouse, spider, snake, lizard)? I've held snakes, rats, lizards, and a tarantula. Who did you last play truth or dare with? No clue. Have you ever camped out somewhere for an event the next day? No. When were you the saddest in your life? 2016. Do you know anyone, personally, who is in an abusive relationship? Are you? No. If you have siblings, have they moved out or do they still live with you? Yeah, they've moved out. What was the most unique pet you’ve owned? I'd probably say my champagne ball python. A lot of people don't even know ball python morphs exist, so seeing her might surprise some people. Do you like Doritos? Yeah. When you buy clothes, do you always try them on first? No, but I need to learn how to... I just HATE doing it. Have you used bugspray recently? No. Do you enjoy swimming in the ocean? Yesssss. Have you ever tried to sew or knit anything? No. Has something ever happened to you that seemed like it was from a movie? Most of Jason's and my relationship felt like one. Hence why the breakup felt so sudden and just impossible. Do you find yourself to be a believer in love at first sight? Not even remotely. Is there something you want to do, that you swear you will, no matter what? Spread Teddy's ashes in Yellowstone. I promised him. Are you longing for the day that you’ll be an adult? (If you’re not already) I am an adult, and it sucks. What’s something you’ve vowed to never eat? Any meat that was hunted. Have you ever owned a diary/journal with a lock and key? I don't believe so. When you were little, what movie did you watch over and over? Mostly Disney films, like The Lion King and Finding Nemo. Are you deathly allergic to anything? No. Do you know what you want for your dream house? Nope. I honestly don't really care about having a "dream" house to begin with. I just need one that's cozy to me and gets the job done. Have you ever seen the movie The Notebook? Many, many times. It's my favorite romance movie. Have you ever used the photo editing site “Picnik”? No, not to my memory. Has an animal ever taken a strong dislike to you? Our old dog Bentley didn't like me all that much, and I didn't like him, either. Have you ever attempted to cut your own hair? No. Do you have a lucky or special coin? No. Do you love ice cream cake more than normal cake? No. Do you check your email daily? No. Is there anyone you know who’s in any way paralyzed? No. For you, do you commonly feel more jealousy or envy? Envy. Do you rely on the heads/tails flipping of a coin sometimes for decisions? No. Has a laptop ever burned your legs? Yes, actually. For a while many years ago, my old laptop left subtle burn marks on my legs. Anyone’s birthday coming up soon? My nephew's is next month. Do you like Laffy Taffy? I doooo. Are your biceps at all noticeable? Ha, no. Have you ever seen a walrus? Maybe when I went to SeaWorld as a kid? Did you ever have one of those easy bake ovens as a kid? Yup. If given the opportunity, would you ride on a camel? Sure. What flavor cake do you like for your birthday? Red velvet. Have you ever had a job you loved? Nope. Have you ever been in a building that was on fire? Yikes, no. Have you ever written a poem for someone? Two people. Have you been best friends with someone of a different race? Yes. Who is the person you are closest to that you’ve met online? Sara. What was the name of the first porcelain doll you got? I was very afraid of dolls as a kid, so I obviously didn't have one. Do you sell any products? If so, what? I mean, I'm a wannabe photographer that sells my service. Owls or peacocks? Owls. Lions or horses? Lions. Can you still fit into kid’s clothes? Hell no. What devotional do you read, if any? None. What do you make wishes on? I only ever do for the tradition of it on my birthday. I don't believe in the magic of wishes, though. Have you ever made a recipe you found in a magazine? No. Are you bitter about anything? Probably always will be. Have you ever been in a love triangle? No. How bad are your hangovers? Never had one. Have you ever broken a bone? If so, what was the cause of it? Yes. It was identified as a fracture, but a break and a fracture are technically like the same thing, so. At a skating rink, I fell and landed on my hand so the top of it nearly touched my arm, so my wrist got FUCKED. I will never, ever forget the severity of the pins and needles feeling and just the experience in general. It hurt so goddamn bad. Is this the best year of your life? Fuck no.

#in other words i don't feel like thinking up song lyrics for three surveys at once lmao #survey #surveys #random questions

3 notes · View notes

acecademia · 3 years

Note

What else are you into? (I can't tell if Tumblr sent this.)

Hi, nonny!

You can probably tell from my previous posts and literally my everything, but outside of academia, I really love young adult literature and also fanfiction 😂 I managed to somehow turn my interests directly into a career, so like, I'm winning at life lmao

I also really like video games, especially story-heavy games. My brother has an MFA in game design, and he's always sending me links to new video games and analog games to check out (analog games being like board games, card games, tabletop games, etc.). (I'm super lucky in that regard--I get the best birthday and Christmas gifts.) Other than that, I spend a lot of time binge-watching Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube amongst other streaming services/platforms. I'm also very into baking, creative writing (mainly YA fantasy and sci-fi), and crochet!

If we're specifically talking about fandoms or media that I'm into, there's an overview of some of my faves (that got super out of hand) below the cut (leaving out books because I covered that in a previous post, though I did forget to mention in that post that comics-wise, I also love DC Bombshells)

Movies:

Clue (1985) - my favorite movie of all time and is basically my sense of humor in one ~90-minute package. My friends hate watching it with me because I have seen it at least 50 times (not an exaggeration) and know every line by heart

Star Wars - lowkey fuck the sequel trilogy tho VII had some promise before they ruined it, also I wanted to marry Luke Skywalker as a kid so like take that as you will

The Old Guard - immortal gays who literally can't be killed? Sign me the fuck up

MCU - the early years mainly, but also like Spider-Man, Captain Marvel, and Black Panther were all *chef's kiss*. Also, #TeamIronMan

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse - hell yeah finally getting some Miles Morales and Spider-Gwen content!

Birds of Prey - it's just such a fun time and so refreshing to see an action movie made by women. Also plz put Ivy in the next movie because I need my wlw crime content

Venom - it's a good time, y'all

Moana - one of my favorite undergrad memories is going with my friend to see this like two weeks early at a special advanced screening

Beauty and the Beast - look, I'm a librarian, of course I've wanted to be Belle and have that library since I was a small child

Love, Simon - I cry every time I watch the "you get to exhale now" scene and the scene with his dad apologizing and accepting him. It warms my little queer heart 😭😭😭

TV:

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Young Justice

9-1-1

Julie and the Phantoms

Leverage

Psych

Lucifer

Shadow and Bone

BBC Merlin

Supernatural - not like as a serious thing anymore, but I was in deep years ago

Teen Wolf - see: the comment about Supernatural, but also I stopped watching around season 4 and just read the fanfic because that whole show was a mess

Would I Lie to You?

Musicals:

Newsies

Bandstand

Fun Home

Bonnie & Clyde - fight me, it was good

A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder - I don't think I've ever laughed harder at a show than when I saw the tour

If/Then

Legally Blonde

A Chorus Line

Allegiance

Wicked - I'm a basic bitch, I know, but I've seen the tour twice for my birthday

Phantom of the Opera - specifically Phantom 25. I will accept no other cast unless they finally manage to make the French-language production happen and Sierra Boggess is able to reprise her role

Games:

Gone Home

Dragon Age

Tomb Raider

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - I love most of the series, but Majora's Mask is my all-time fave

Fallout

Assassin's Creed

Overwatch

The Sims 4

Music:

Fall Out Boy

Lindsey Stirling

Aly & AJ

Taylor Swift

Marie-Mai - love me some French pop

Olivia Rodrigo

Paramore

Meet Me @ the Altar

Panic! at the Disco

Web:

Carmilla

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

Jenny Nicholson

Jessica Kellgren-Fozard

Bernadette Banner

Karolina Żebrowska

Philip DeFranco

Jill Bearup

Kitboga

STRANGE ÆONS

Sarah Z

Lindsay Ellis

Rachel Maksy

Buzzfeed Unsolved - RIP 😭😭😭

Standup:

Dara O'Briain - the funniest man alive. I have literally laughed so hard at some of his jokes that I've legitimately had trouble breathing

John Mulaney

James Acaster

Sarah Millican

Steve Hofstetter

Iliza Shlesinger

Hasan Minhaj

Okay, that's way more information than literally anyone ever wanted to know about me, and also I'll probably remember like 3 million things I forgot to mention as soon as I post this 😂

#replies #anon #nicole speaks #nicole rambles #about me #faves

2 notes · View notes

squirrelly831 · 4 years

Text

Falling Asleep on Him [Youngjae, Jongup, and Junhong]

Youngjae

Madison headed backstage a B.A.P concert. She had planned to see the concert before the boys went on their last world tour, however, she knew she would be too exhausted to sit through the concert.

Youngjae had his manager bring her in the back after he got her text about being exhausted. When he saw his little zombie girlfriend trudge to the dressing room, he felt bad. He had begged her to come out to their last concert and to see her struggle to even walk made him feel guilty. He went over to her and pulled her into his arms. “You look terrible.”

She weakly punched his abdominal, “What a nice boyfriend.” She sneered. Youngjae liked when she was tired, she was like a whole different person with how savage and sarcastic she’d get. “I was up all night finishing my designs for the comic con in New York. And you bring me out to a noise infested place. I hate you sometimes.”

Youngjae led her to the couch, “I’m sorry. I feel bad asking you out here. You can try and sleep back here. After the concert maybe we can go to our cafe?”

She rolled her eyes, “As if I’d fall asleep with all this noise.”

Youngjae moved her to rest on couch just before he was called to get ready to hit the stage. He kissed her forehead.

“Have a good concert, butt head” she muttered.

After some songs, Youngjae went backstage to change outfits. He went to the dressing room to check on Madison and saw her out like a light. He wanted so much as to take a picture of her sleeping self, but he talked himself out of it. A smirk made its way to his lips, “And you said you couldn’t sleep to all this noise.”

Jongup

Rachel was a choreographer who worked mainly with idol groups in smaller companies. Her rise in popularity had her busy with other groups from bigger companies that hired her to choreograph songs. Due to her rise in popularity, the amount of work accumulated. However, after her latest work with Blackpink, she decided to take a break from her studio and work.

One day during her break, she was at her studio with her boyfriend, Jongup, who wanted to work on his debut song. They danced for some time before the two of them threw themselves out on the floor.

Rachel’s chest rose and fell as she caught her breath, “You know… when I decided to take a break for work, I didn’t expect to be back here dancing.”

Jongup gave her an apologetic look, “Sorry, I just really wanted to practice. You want to go to my place? We can shower and watch movies?” She nodded and Jongup stood up before he helped her up.

After their shower, Rachel threw herself on Jongup’s bed and yawned, “My entire body aches.” She whined.

Jongup climbed in bed and held her close, “Sorry.” He apologized for the hundredth time. He ran his hand over her spine as he hit a movie on Netflix to watch. He threw his arm over her as he watched the movie not realizing Rachel’s eyes shut.

It wasn’t until midway through the movie when Jongup noticed how quite his girlfriend was as she usually added commentary. He glanced down to see Rachel curled up with her head on his chest out like a light. Jongup smiled as he tried his best not to move from his position and focused back on the movie.

Junhong

Junhong and Naomi were at her apartment in the middle of an intense video game. Naomi leaned forward as her fingers moved quick across the controller, “I’m gonna win this time!” She shot off another one of Junhong’s men as she searched for him in the game. Junhong nudged her to make her lose, but she held onto her controller tighter as her arms shifted to her left. “CHEATER!” She locked on to his person from a sniper view, “Victory is mine!”

Junhong moved his player around in a panic, “No no! Don’t!”

She hit the x and the shot was fired. His side of the screen went dark as ‘GAME OVER’ appeared. “WOO!!” She screeched as she jumped off the couch and threw her controller on the cushion. “In your face!”

Junhong smirked as he grabbed her controller and killed her avatar who was mid dance, “Damn babe, why’d you kill your person like that?” He teased.

“Such a cheater!” She gasped as she fell back on the couch. She let out a loud yawn as she pressed her hands to her lips.

Zelo paused the game and patted her head, “You’ve been yawning a lot today. That tired?”

She nodded, “I didn’t sleep last night. It’s starting to kick in now.”

“Why didn’t you go to sleep?” Naomi shrugged, “Was it work?”

“Yea, I got the last few pages of the book I am illustrating, so I was able to start working on the art, but I ended up working through the night.”

Zelo turned off the game and sighed, “Come on.” He held out his hand.

“Where are we going?” Curiously, she took his hand. He led her to his bedroom and lay down on the bed while he dragged her with him, “Junhong, what are you-”

“No, stay.” As Naomi tried to sit up, he pulled her back down. “Take a nap with me. I’m tired and so are you.”

“I’m not that tired.” She scoffed. Junhong turned on the tv and she leaned on the bed frame. Her eyes grew heavy as her head tilted to his shoulder and she drifted.

Junhong looked at his sleeping girlfriend, “I’m not that tired, she says.” He carefully pulls her down on the bed so her head rested on the pillow beside him. He put his head in his hand and watched her as he ignored the tv in the background. She was a much better watch than the tv any day.

Part I

Credit to gif owners

Written & revamped by Squirrelly831

♕ REQUEST

☮ B.A.P MASTERLIST

∞ ULTIMATE MASTERLIST

#kpop #kpop reactions #bap #bap reactions #b.a.p.#b.a.p reactions #youngjae reactions #youngjae #Yoo Youngjae #jongup #jongup reactions #junhong #junhong reactions #zelo #zelo reactions

2 notes · View notes

ladyculebras · 5 years

Text

ALL THE WAYS THE PET SEMATARY REMAKE IS BAD

SPOILERS OBVIOUSLY FOR EVERYTHING

1. This movie blames Rachel for EVERYTHING. This is the big main thing that bothers me throughout the film. Rachel is at fault, either directly or subtly, throughout the film.

First off, Rachel is the one who fears death so much she cannot bear to prepare her daughter for the possibility of Church dying, while the original actively had them trying to get Church fixed so he wouldn't wander around so much and thus, less likely to die. This wouldn't bother me so much, but LOUIS is the one who okay talking about death and wants to talk to Ellie about it and wants to not shield her from the truth that Church could die. This...ruins the whole narrative thrust. Louis is supposed to be fearful of death, shying away from exposing his family to it in any capacity, to the point where he avoid any kind of confrontation and causes the whole problem. Louis and his inability to handle death when it hits home is the whole POINT.

But furthermore, Rachel is the one who doesn't want to tell Ellie about Church dying! Louis WANTS to tell her but Rachel convinces him to tell her that Church ran away and tells him to go bury Church in secret. So inadvertently, it's all Rachel's fault. If Louis just talked to his daughter about death, and her dead cat, none of this would have happened. It completely removes accountability from Louis, when that is his whole tragic flaw.

Look this wouldn't bother me so much if Rachel were the main character instead. You want to make it her fault this happens, that's okay! But make her drive the story then! Don't do it as a way to absolve Louis of further responsibility!!!!!!

FURTHERMORE!!!! YES THERE'S MORE. After Ellie's death, Rachel is the one who decides to go away and leaves Louis behind...for reasons. Like yes I understand why she would want to get away from this awful place, but the movie completely cuts out the subplot of Rachel's parents hating Louis, so there is no reason for him not to go. But this also removes Louis actively conspiring to get Rachel to go away so he can go do a bad thing. It's a small thing but a really important thing that means Louis just doesn't come off as badly as he did in the original. The original movie is about grief but it's also about the folly of a man who is unable to let go or listen to anyone around him, and making terrible decisions that he hides from the female members of his family that ruins them all. It's so clearly obvious the male directors did not want Louis to look TOO BAD. Trying to remove accountability from Louis ruins the whole point and the tragedy as well. If Louis doesn't make these choices, if held held back from accepting death because his wife asked him too, how can this be his fault.

2. BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE ON RACHEL'S HANDS.

In the original, Rachel recounts her sister Zelda's death in a scene with Louis and explains that she wanted her to die and she felt awful for wanting that. Louis comforts her and tells her she did nothing wrong and her parents were awful for putting her through that. Then insists she takes a valium for her anxiety because LOLZ THE 80s AND CASUAL DRUG USE, MAN.

Here, she tells Louis the story but explains that she ACCIDENTALLY killed her sister, by forcing her sister--who can't get out of bed--to crawl to a dumbwaiter to get her food where she falls in, because Rachel was too scared.to go up to her and give her the food herself. Now, I don't have a problem with this, this doesn't make her a bad person in my eyes, but the change itself puts some responsibility on an EIGHT YEAR OLD KID for her sister's death in a way that the original movie and book didn't.

Then later, reanimated Ellie says YOU PRAYED YOUR SISTER WOULD DIE like it's an evil dark secret that she's revealing. AS IF THATS SOMETHING A EIGHT YEAR OLD NEEDS TO FEEL BAD ABOUT. AS IF THAT MAKES RACHEL ACTUALLY TERRIBLE.

God I hate this change the most because I adored the original for going there with the themes of grief and exploring all the ugly messy emotions involved in grief and not just dead children but prolonged illness. And demonizing those emotions for a cheap shocking reveal at the end is not dark and mature storytelling, its childish.

3. Also holy shit this movie mishandled Zelda so badly. They have Zelda straight up threaten Rachel and say she hated her and she was going to end up just like her. Her NEVER GET OUT OF BED AGAIN line is an actual threat to her. It was a weird demonization of an ill woman, when the original was already sketching the line in its portrayal of meningitis, but this was so much worse. Those words are manifestations of Rachel's anxiety!!! THEY ARE NOT ACTUAL THREATS. IT'S JUST RACHEL THINKING HER SISTER MUST HATE HER.

The whole scene is played for weird jack in the box jump scares instead of the existential horror of watching your sister be ravaged by disease when you are too young to understand what that is.

4. Ellie is this weird perfect angel child, and it bothers me. In the original story, she's scared of the pet sematary at first. She has a great speech about how Church is her cat, not God's cat, he can't have him! She cries and storms off and throws tantrums and says SHIT. She is a regular kid, basically. In the book, she actively annoys Louis! Here, she's just...boringly perfect. Everyone loves her. She never gets angry. She never cries. She doesn't even seem upset when Church attacks her. Jud is enchanted by her, literally saying he is under her spell, WTF. This wouldn't be so bad in general, bad writing for a child but not necessarily awful, but it bothers me the most here because it's all set up for when Ellie dies and comes back as a total monster. Ellie cannot actually be her own character but a pedestaled symbol of a child for Louis to cry over, and for the audience to feel horrified by when she returns as a shell of herself. At least when the original did that with Gage, it made sense, because he is a TODDLER and they have no real personalities. We as a whole tend to over idealize babies and the only thing you can really do with Gage narratively is make him a symbol.

5. Speaking of Zombie Ellie, I wanted to be open to the whole Ellie dies and comes back thing! I hated the idea of it initially but I was hoping it'd be interesting. I liked the beginning, with Ellie being set up as fascinated and drawn to the pet semetary to begin with, and I was kinda hoping the movie would follow her pov instead. After all, I love a good monster girl story and I was really intrigued by the idea of Ellie being AWARE she's been reanimated, and angry about it, upset about it. But tbh, I think the movie in general seemed to go with the idea that Ellie is not Ellie at all but the wendigo, acting through her.

But it was BAD, partly because the actress was not good--not her fault she was given poor direction and shitty material and she's just a KID--but also partly because these dudes just don't know how to write women and don't know how to write girls and didn't really grant the reanimated Ellie any actual humanity or depth. She existed to torment those around her, like she was seeking revenge, rather than coming back wrong as something monstrous like child Gage in the original. She came off as a generic creepy girl child who was possessed.

HONESTLY just having Ellie speak was a terrible idea. I sort of get what they were going for, after all,in the book, undead Gage speaks and knows things he should not know, and Elie as an avatar of...the wendigo *TAKE A FUCKING SHOT* would do the same, I get that they were doing that. But oh god the batman voice they gave her and the terrible lines sounded so OFF. She would have been creepier if she didn't say anything or at least, spoke in a regular little girl voice. It would have been creepier if she was clearly not Ellie and Louis didn't care--they kept going so back and forth on Louis in these scenes, first he is scared of what he brought back and uncomfortable with her and yelling at her, but then he is all HUG YOUR DAUGHTER!!!!!!! GOD CAN HAVE HIS OWN CHILD!!!!! And then he is back to wanting to kill her. But honestly, I don't need the movie to have done things my way, just...not this. This was terribly executed.

6. Speaking of, they were doing some weird...psychosexual Elektra complex with undead Ellie and Louis. First the shot with both of them in the bed together is mirrored earlier with a shot of both Rachel and Louis in bed together....okay then. I mean. That doesn't mean anything. Maybe I am just misinterpreting. But then Ellie is like SHE DOESNT WANT ME HERE AND I DON'T WANT MOMMY HERE (but she still...reanimates her...for reasons. Why. I don't understand).

Then Ellie attacks Jud and wears the face of his WIFE TO DO IT and torments him like that.

Why. Why would you do this. I hate these writers. These are the worst choices.

7. THEY GAVE ELLIE'S PSYCHIC POWERS TO GAGE I'M SO ANGRY ABOUT THIS.

8. This movie legit single perfect tears Louis during Ellie's funeral. Are you kidding me. A single perfect tear. FOR REAL. THIS IS A MOVIE ABOUT GRIEF.

9. A lot of the promo material before the movie came out made a big deal about staying truer to the book than the original and it being an adaptation of the book, not a remake of the movie. Sure, but they barely do anything with wendigo and I'm kinda glad, because the whole INDIAN BURIAL GROUND is a bad trope and King's depiction of the Wendigo is soooo wrong and misinformed and terrible but like..this movie didn't do anything with the mythology except name drop it.

10. I AM ACTUALLY MAD THEY MADE CHURCH EVIL. Like this is nitpicking I know but! In the book, Church (and the reanimated dog) isn't actually evil, he's a zombie. Hes described as not quite how to be a cat anymore. And even in the movie, Church doesn't do anything sinister. He only attacks Louis and who could blame him, and he never hurts Ellie at all. She still sleeps with him in her bed. So I am honestly annoyed they had Church actively attack Ellie jklasfasda

11. Oh my god let's talk about Pascow. WHAT THE FUCK HAVE THEY DONE TO PASCOW. They completely neutered him and made him just a generic ghost, for the most part. Pascow is cheerful in the original, while also being creepy yet relatable. You can really emphasize with his sheer helplessness to stop the tragedy from unfolding. But none of that comes across here. Maybe they wanted to maintain the completely SERIOUS tone, but ultimately Pascow is supposed to be a soothing presence. He is there to remind people that death isn't evil and something that needs to be accepted. He isn't supposed to be there for jump scares, and then completely disappear for the most part.

12. Also the optics of casting a black man for Pascow , and then completely and grotesquely fucking up his face so bad his brains are exposed in his scenes...while Ellie also gets hit by a truck and she looks completely okay, like a perfect corpse angel is just. Gross and bad and racist and sexist ALL AT ONCE, AMAZING.

Like look, I don't WANT to see a mutilated gored up child, sure, but it's so shitty that both these characters get hit by trucks and the black man looks like....he got hit by a truck but the white child looks fine. She looks fine. Her head is stapled and her eyes are a little mismatched but fine.

13. THE EDITING IS SO BAD. It feels like they couldn't WAIT to get to the ending fast enough so scenes will literally smash cut to the next right in the middle of an action. There was a moment where Church is hissing and then it just CUTS immediately in the middle of hissing, he doesn't even get to finish hissing! Just cut to the next scene! There is no lingering on a moment to just process. Things just happen.

14. The story of Timothy, the person who was brought back one time, is just a footnote in this movie. It's barely relevant. That was a such a great creepy moment that underscored the whole movie and it's themes, and it's just gone.

15. Why is Jud so creepy. He literally looks at Louis and the family from a distance and ominously smokes a cigarette and he's so mysterious for no reason and even his first meeting with Ellie he yells at her and then is like WHAT, CAN'T YOU READ about the pet sematary sign. WHAT ARE THESE CHOICES. For a moment I thought Jud would be evil but no he's just weird and creepy for reasons? The movie sacrificed his and Louis' relationship to build one with him and Ellie, which is cute but also kinda bothers me because it's really to just make Ellie look like she is SO IMPORTANT TO JUD and that's why he tells Louis how to bring her cat back and it's…weird. Jud seems overinvested in the family and kids that aren't his rather than like,being friends with them all.

Jud is CHARMING. You fall in love with his kindly old man gentleman nature. He feels like everyone's grandpa. He is warm and delightful and it's such a shock and horror when he dies in such a brutal way. Trying to frame him in shadow with an ominous cigarette reduces the warmth of the character for no reason!

Furthermore, Jud's warmth is meant to obscure that he's ultimately rather weak himself, in character, just like Louis. He's not entirely at fault for the events but he cant help himself in telling Louis about burying church, rather than implying that the dark power is literally ensnaring him to make Louis do it jaksfsadfasdfa

16. LOUIS LITERALLY DRUGS JUD LIKE A DATE RAPIST WHAT THE FUCK

17. Guys, you can't just turn on a fog machine on your set and say you're an atmospheric movie. HAVING FOG IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR GENUINE DREAD.

18. The ending is just bad. I REALLY WANTED TO LIKE zombie family but its filmed like for cheap shock, rather than genuine horror. I love dark endings, but it didn't feel like a tragedy the movie should be, it just felt like the hand of the writers were trying to do a different ending to say SEE THIS IS DIFFERENT! LOOK AT HOW DIFFERENT AND DARK WE ARE. I just...hate the whole framing. I love the idea of the whole family being reanimated but I CAN'T UNDERSTAND WHY. Ellie wanted to torture them like she is being tortured? That's a great concept but it's not really a thing in the movie. You can't tell if Zombie Rachel or Zombie Louis feel any kind of horror or torment at their own state, which undercuts the whole reanimation.

Ok in the interest of being fair, here are some things I liked.

1. I do genuinely love Ellie in this movie at the beginning. I liked the idea of her being drawn to the cemetery. I really liked the scene where Louis is giving her a bath and he sees the staples from the autopsy. I loved the bits when it was sort of suggested that even she didn't know why she was back and where she had gone and did not understand why she could feel the woods inside her. I wish we just expanded on that more.

2. Church. Church is great. Church is always great. Best cat, did no wrong. This movie did not kill the cat off for good, so that is a bonus.

3. There's a moment where Louis is trying to justify bring Ellie back to life and Rachel is just staring at him agog and horrified and Louis is wild eyed and shaking and it's the most terrifying moment in the movie for me. Not Ellie or the wendigo, but LOUIS, having completely lost it and not giving a shit that he has an undead monster daughter right now. SO GREAT. The movie undercuts it later by having him realize he ~needs to kill Ellie~ again and like...no, go full steam ahead with that.

4. SOME SHOTS LOOK GOOD I GUESS

In conclusion MEN ARE DUMB AND SHOULD NOT BE GIVEN WOMEN'S FILMS TO REMAKE

#anti pet semetary #pet semetary spoilers #sometimes dead REALLY IS BETTER

23 notes · View notes

preserving-ferretbrain · 5 years

Text

Tokens, Lampshades, and the Trouble With Deconstruction

by Dan H

Wednesday, 30 June 2010

Dan finds Glee “Problematic”~

There is nothing more infuriating than middle class white boys claiming that some event that mildly irritated them gives them a profound insight into the world of the disadvantaged. “I once blamed immigrants for my own failure, therefore I know what it's like to be discriminated against” that sort of thing.

With this warning, let me tell you about my recent epiphany about stereotypes.

Kyra and I bought the first series of NCIS in order to stop ourselves from having to watch the eye bleedingly awful Lie To Me (tip from the experts: if a woman says she was raped, but isn't acting scared, she's lying).

Anyway NCIS was going well, and largely avoiding the buckets of fail that saturated Lie to Me. And it had a cute goth forensics chick and a Big Machine That Does Science so yay. Then we got to episode four: The Immortals.

In this episode, a young seaman (it's a naval crime show) was found drowned in full dress uniform, with weights tied to his waist.

Amongst his personal effects they found a character charter from an online fantasy game.

The rest was a checklist of horrendous gamer stereotypes.

Gamers unable to distinguish between game and reality. Check.

Gamers made violent by video games. Check.

Gamers driven to murder and/or suicide as a result of online interactions. Check and check.

Use of phrase “taking the game to the next level” (seriously I have seen this in every TV show about video games ever) check.

I mention this because there is a small part of me which , every time I see a horrendously stereotyped character on TV, says “well that's probably quite offensive, but I suppose you have to remember that the stereotype wouldn't exist if there wasn't some truth in it.”

Watching stereotypical portrayals of groups to which I actually belong reminds me that no, actually a lot of stereotypes are just outright fucking lies.

None of this has much to do with anything, but we'll be coming back to it later.

The Magic of Knowledge

So anyway, Glee is a not-exactly-musical not-exactly-comedy about a High-School Glee Club (the clue is in the name) which goes from humble beginnings to be all that and a bag of chips.

The pilot follows the foundation-slash-resurrection of the Glee club, with the recruitment of its six initial members who are respectively:

Rachel, an overambitious girl with dreams of stardom (to the extent that every time she signs her name she puts a gold star next to it, which is a metaphor, for her being a star). We are told that Rachel is very talented.

Finn, a boy who the Dead Poets' Society-esque teacher behind the Glee club frames for drug possession and then blackmails into joining Glee, for his own good.

Kurt, a fabulous gay boy who the writers edited into the show because they were so utterly taken with the actor. He is, to be fair, adorable – although it might be worth pointing out that the character he plays was originally supposed to be Indian. It might also be worth pointing out that Glee has won awards for diversity.

Mercedes, a fat black girl. Astute readers may note that this is the point where the character descriptions get, shall we say, shorter. Mercedes declares early on that she “ain't no backup singer”. This rapidly proves to be wishful thinking.

Tina, an Asian girl. I genuinely do not know what to make of Tina. She dresses in this quirky, slightly gothy style and her audition piece is a rather nice, slightly raunchy rendition of I Kissed a Girl. But she never actually says or does anything. Ever. It's almost like the costume department put more thought into her personality than the writers.

Artie. Artie is in a wheelchair. Artie also seems to spend a good part of the first episode pulling what I can only describe as “disabled face” - leaving his mouth hanging open and twisting his head to the side like he's trying to chew his own ear. Artie is not played by a wheelchair-using actor.

one of the many reviews

that have said all of this before put it: “Mmmm, token-y”.

So yeah. Tokenistic.

But wait! It's okay because the show knows that it's being tokenistic! It is using these “tropes” to be satirical!

Years ago there was a comedy sketch show in Oxford which I didn't actually see, but one of the better exchanges in it, as reported to me by my younger brother was as follows:

“It's not racist, it's satirical!” “What's it a satire of?” “Black people!”

This nicely sums up the issue with the awful stereotypes in Glee. Apparently the mere fact of acknowledging them excuses them. It's not a stereotype if you know it's a stereotype, because then it's satire. You don't even have to subvert or challenge the stereotype in any way. As long as you know about it.

That's the power of knowledge.

Glee gives us a central cast consisting entirely of stereotypes, and does nothing to challenge them.

What it does challenge, however, is the idea that presenting the characters as stereotypes is in any way bad.

Apologia, Apologia, Apologia

The tokenism in Glee is irritating, but it's one of those things I can kind of let slide. It's just a fact of life: fish swim, birds fly, Peter Molyneaux writes crappy video games, and TV shows include token black characters and get given diversity awards for it.

Except.

Except, except, except.

About halfway through the first volume of the boxed set there's an episode in which Sue Sylvester (the evil cheerleading coach) decides to take a “divide and rule” approach in her private war against the Glee Club, sowing dissent amongst the ranks by spreading the completely unsubstantiated and unjustified idea that the Glee Club doesn't give equal representation to its minority members.

The whole episode (Wikipedia informs me that it was entitled Throwdown) is excruciating. Unlike some commentators, I don't have a problem with Sue Sylvester, because I think it's fairly clear we're meant to disagree with her, and that's what makes the episode so difficult. Basically they take all of the criticisms people have of the show and put them in the mouth of a raging psychopath.

So Sue Sylvester splits the glee club in two and seduces all of the minorities over to her side with honeyed words and filthy, filthy lies.

Sylvester's “false” criticisms of the Glee Club boil down to the following:

That the minority characters are margainalised. They are.

That the minority characters are made to stand at the back and act like props. They are.

Two things about this episode are particularly frustrating. The first is that real, legitimate criticisms of the show are presented as lies invented by a balls-out villain. The second is that the minority kids are kind of made to look like idiots for being taken in by the whole thing. Mercedes' unalloyed delight at being presented with Hate on Me to sing is borderline embarrassing: “all right! An R&B song!” she says, she might as well follow it up with “I like this black people music, because I am black!”

The episode ends with the black, Asian, gay and disabled students deciding that they want to go back and work with the pretty white people and that they don't want to be given “special treatment” just because they're minorities. Because apparently getting to do the things that the white kids get to do in every single episode constitutes special treatment.

This would be almost bearable except that “minorities are given special treatment” is a recurring theme in Glee. Rachel constantly uses the spectre of her “two gay dads” to threaten people with the “full force of the ACLU”, and there's an awful scene in the

by no means uncontroversial

episode Wheels where Finn gets a job in a hotel by rolling up to them in a wheelchair and saying “you have to give me a job because I'm disabled.” (I paraphrase, it's actually Rachel who does the talking and she honest-to-shit uses the word “handicapable”).

How the show can have the brass fucking bollocks to repeat the “minorities get unfair advantages” myth while at the same time devoting ninety percent of its screentime to straight, white, able-bodied characters I do not know. Still, it gives you a profound respect for the kid who plays Artie, I mean he managed to overcome the huge disadvantage of not having a physical disability to land a role in a major TV show. And think of the guts it must have taken for the producers to take such a risk – I mean by not casting a wheelchair user they were practically asking for a lawsuit. Hats off to you, Fox.

And to make matters worse, the episode ends with Mr Schuster reminding the kids that “really, they're all minorities, because they're all in Glee Club.” Because having an unpopular hobby is exactly the same as being part of a group which is subject to systematic discrimination, oh yes.

The defence that is consistently wheeled out for Glee being so ragingly tokenistic is the fact that it's doing it all knowingly to subvert the stereotypes. Ironically it's exactly this that I find so disturbing about the series. If it was just full of slightly embarrassing stereotypes I'd be more or less willing to let it slide, it'd be annoying but no more annoying than a large number of other TV shows. The problem is that Glee is aware its being offensive, but refuses to address it. Its like the producers are standing up and saying “hey, we put a black girl and a wheelchair kid in it, what more do you want?”

The Other Sort of Prejudice

The thing is, I can see where the producers are coming from. I think they're wrong, but this is very much an “I believe that you believe it” situation.

The guys behind Glee like the guys behind the Avatar movie, and the guys behind the Earthseaminiseries, really do believe that they cast every role in the series utterly fairly, without prejudice of any kind. If a black kid had been right for Finn, they would have cast a black guy. If an Asian girl had been right for Rachel, Rachel would have been Asian. It just happened not to work out that way. Funnily enough.

Except.

There's an interesting interview on the final disc of the first DVD box set in which series creator Ryan Murphy explained that he already knew Lea Michele, who plays Rachel, before casting her. He explains that the character of Rachel was very much written with Lea Michele in mind. He further explains that despite this fact she “had to audition like everybody else.”

Except no, she didn't audition like everybody else. She auditioned for a part that was specifically written for her in front of people she already knew and who I strongly suspect were all very much inclined to give her the job before she began. She might have auditioned, but she didn't audition “like everybody else”.

Just to be clear, I really like Lea Michele, I think she did really well in Glee, and the fact that the character was written with her in mind really does make her better suited to play the character. But this still gave her a specific, undeniable advantage over the other people who auditioned.

I freely confess that I don't work in casting, but I strongly suspect that if you're casting for a particular role in a show, you're going to have a decent idea of what you want a particular character to look like. And that basically means that people who don't fit your preconceptions aren't going to be as “good” in the role as other people. What seems like an entirely unbiased decision is actually one steeped in your own prejudices – even if it's something as natural and reasonable as prejudice in favour of the girl you wrote the part for in the first place.

The DVD special features were full of cute little anecdotes about the casting process. The actor who played Finn submitted a video audition in which he was drumming on cereal packets and the casting team were so blown away by his verve and passion that they ignored the fact that he didn't actually show whether or not he could sing. The actor cast as Kurt impressed the judges so much that they rewrote his character from the ground up, in order to fit him better. Again I absolutely believe that the producers believe that the extent to which they were impressed with these two actors was a pure product of their individual talent and personality, but the truth is that we react more strongly and more favourably to people we perceive as being similar to ourselves.

Put simply, while Chris Colfer (Kurt) is no doubt adorable, I really couldn't put my hand on my heart and say that he's stand-out more talented than Jenna Ushkowitz (Tina) or Amber Riley (Mercedes). What I can say is that if I was writing a TV show about a bunch of highschool kids singing showtunes, I'd have a much better idea what to do with a cute camp kid than a feisty black girl. With some of Mercedes' dialogue you can practically here the writers saying “quick, what are black people interested in? I know, R&B!”

What makes Glee difficult isn't the fact that the writers are so transparently more interested in their white, able bodied actors than the rest of the cast, it's the fact that they're so obsessed with denying it, and then patting themselves on the back about denying it. What makes it worse is that I really do believe that they believe their own apologia. Unfortunately part of what they seem to believe is that minorities are routinely given special treatment in the name of “political correctness” an that's a belief which is actually harmful (as well as being one which is flatly contradicted by their own casting decisions).

That said, I'll probably still watch the rest of the series because, y'know, showtunes.Themes:

TV & Movies

Minority Warrior

bookmark this with - facebook - delicious - digg - stumbleupon - reddit

~Comments (

go to latest

)

https://me.yahoo.com/a/EA0c88lilpj2n2eytQTnMdudrtUMV2acww--#ea8e8

at 16:21 on 2010-06-30God, Glee. Hate it. Hate, hate, hate. Have you gotten to the episode where the teacher is an abusive fuckwit and then the show focuses on his angst (not about being an abusive fuckwit) and blames his wife for making her husband act like an abusive fuckwit? Terrifying.

And yeah, the bullshit about beautiful white people "just happening" to fit the major roles . . . I don't even know what to do with that.

I wish it wasn't so rage-inducing, because I have a deep, sparkly love for Jane Lynch, and am thrilled she's in a popular sow. I just wish the show was better.

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 17:09 on 2010-06-30Tragically, I've heard that later on Glee gets a lot better (or perhaps just gets a lot better on some issues). There's a really nice bit later on where Kurt's dad calls out Finn on using "faggy" as derogatory.

The show, it is problematic.

permalink

go to top

Viorica

at 17:29 on 2010-06-30Yeah, they spend a lot more time ealing with Kurt's issues and the discrimination he faces than the discrimination faced by Mercedes or Artie. I suspect it's because Ryan Murphy is a gay man himself, and thus is okay with

his

issues being represented, but not the issues of a black girl or a kid in a wheelchair.

Also, there are two cheerleaders (Brittany and Santana) who are hinted at being together, but Ryan Murphy says they won't be exploring that because- and I quote- "

it's not that kind of show

." That was about the point when I actually exploded with rage.

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 17:34 on 2010-06-30Oh dear me.

"Oh come on, you've got the L Word! Why do you need another TV show about lesbians!"

permalink

go to top

Viorica

at 18:00 on 2010-06-30"It's not like we deal with gay teenagers anyw- wait."

*sigh*

One of the more frusturating aspects for me is that I have friends who are huge Glee fans, and accuse me of criticising them when I point out the flaws in the show. Being subjected to "SHUT UP YOU DON'T NOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT YOU'RE JUST EMBARASSING YOURSELF" every time I mention the show's problems is a great form of aversion therapy.

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 18:06 on 2010-06-30

"It's not like we deal with gay teenagers anyw- wait."

In all seriousness I suspect that might be part of the problem.

One gay kid = teen show.

Three gay kids = GAY SHOW

One of the more frusturating aspects for me is that I have friends who are huge Glee fans, and accuse me of criticising them when I point out the flaws in the show.

It's difficult. What I find really tough with Glee is that some people genuinely seem to find it empowering (I believe Tiger Beatdown described it as "dismantling the Kyriarchy").

On the other hand, if your friends just don't like you complaining because ZOMG SHOWTUNES then they can ... well they're your friends, so they can Sit Down And Think About What They've Done.

permalink

go to top

Viorica

at 18:12 on 2010-06-30

One gay kid = teen show. Three gay kids = GAY SHOW

And the gay kid just happens to be one the creator can identify with. Of course.

My friends actually like it because they can identify with the characters that do get screentime (one's a gay guy) so they insist that criticism of the show is criticism of them, even after I repeatedly denied it, and accused disability/women's advocates of "looking for things to be offended by." I give up.

permalink

go to top

Andy G

at 18:20 on 2010-06-30Actually, the Tiger Beatdown quote was:

"I wish I could have titled this piece “How Glee is Dissolving the Kyriarchy Through Song” or “Let’s All Go Out for Equality Slushies, Our Work Here is Done!” But I can’t. Because lately, Glee has been making me squirm. Somewhere along the way, Glee became problematic. It stopped merely depicting systemic prejudice and discrimination, and started contributing to it. And I can remember exactly when it happened."

http://tigerbeatdown.com/2010/06/10/wont-stop-believin-a-gleek-turns-against-the-thing-he-loves/

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 18:23 on 2010-06-30Ah, shows what I know.

permalink

go to top

Jamie Johnston

at 18:29 on 2010-06-30

What I find really tough with Glee is that some people genuinely seem to find it empowering (I believe Tiger Beatdown described it as "dismantling the Kyriarchy").

Er... are you thinking of

this article

, which says:

I wish I could have titled this piece “How Glee is Dissolving the Kyriarchy Through Song” or “Let’s All Go Out for Equality Slushies, Our Work Here is Done!” But I can’t. Because lately, Glee has been making me squirm. Somewhere along the way, Glee became problematic. It stopped merely depicting systemic prejudice and discrimination, and started contributing to it.

(Admittedly the author identifies different problems from the ones you mention and seems to say that they only set in considerably later in the series.)

permalink

go to top

Jamie Johnston

at 18:29 on 2010-06-30D'oh! Andy types faster than I.

permalink

go to top

Arthur B

at 18:35 on 2010-06-30

You know, over here at Straight White Able-Bodied Guy HQ we call that "divide and rule".

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 18:37 on 2010-06-30

D'oh! Andy types faster than I.

I shall consider myself well and truly down-smuck.

Generally though there is still positive reception of Glee out there and it does seem to polarise people. I think the issue is that it gets so much right on the one hand and so much wrong on the other.

permalink

go to top

Sister Magpie

at 19:25 on 2010-06-30I was really surprised to hear that Kurt wasn't there from the beginning because I always assumed he was sort of the author's stand in. He's gay, he obviously has a feeling for that kind of discrimination, so that's the main discrimination that gets played with.

Though I would say regarding the scene where Kurt's dad tells Finn off, the speech in itself is great (it could perhaps be considered a fantasy speech of things you wish your dad would say in that situation) but even that ep prefers to lean more in the direction of gay being a way you present yourself instead of a sexuality. Which is a fine place to start, but I am still waiting to see if they go into the other aspects of it instead of again claiming that "we're all freaks--because we're in Glee Club!" Um, no. When the bullies call Kurt a freak they mean he's gay. They pick on him because he's gay. They threaten Finn by suggesting he is gay etc.

I remember one ep where they made a joke where people in Glee were voting on something and someone voted for "other Asian"--a background character. That's a perfect example of the show's strange attitude, occasionally lampshading the problems without just not creating the problem.

Especially in eps like Wheels where not only does Finn happily reap the alleged advantages of being a minority, but Artie winds up not even solving the problem that started the ep (that he couldn't ride with the rest of the group on the bus) by sacrificing *his* immediate desires to any disabled people who might come along later. So basically the able-bodied kids complained a lot, but raised some money, and then happily went back to their original attitude of not caring at all if Artie rode the bus with them. The guy in the wheelchair. The only guy who did anything for or cared anything about access for the disabled was the guy in the wheelchair.

permalink

go to top

Jamie Johnston

at 22:00 on 2010-06-30Sorry, Dan, I think I must be having a stupid day because I've been turning it over in the back of my head for a couple of hours and I'm still not completely sure how the

NCIS

anecdote relates. Which means I've probably missed something important in the article as a whole. Can I impose on you (or anyone else who is having a intellect-functioning-properly day) for a 'for dummies' version?

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 22:09 on 2010-06-30Partially it doesn't.

Partially it was a holdover from an earlier version of the article that was going to focus more on the "lampshading" element of Glee.

Basically Glee gets a lot of mileage out of people saying "No, don't you see, all these stereotypes are *subversive* because *everybody knows they aren't true*". The thing about the NCIS episode is that for me it highlighted in a very simple, very minor way, the fact that "everybody knows it isn't true" doesn't stop a stereotype being offensive because in fact PEOPLE DON'T KNOW IT ISN'T TRUE.

Then the whole thing morphed and the anecdote was left stuck there like a shark in a roof.

permalink

go to top

Viorica

at 22:12 on 2010-06-30

You know, over here at Straight White Able-Bodied Guy HQ we call that "divide and rule".

So it IS a conspiracy!

permalink

go to top

http://furare.livejournal.com/

at 02:10 on 2010-07-01

Because having an unpopular hobby is exactly the same as being part of a group which is subject to systematic discrimination, oh yes.

This is probably related to the phenomenon whereby (some) geek guys think that they Understand Women, because, after all, they are discriminated against and therefore can't possibly be part of The Problem. You even get a few guys who claim that, because some things have been difficult for them, there is no systematic sexism in society. After all, they're men! And they got made to suffer for not fitting in! Women are just paranoid for seeing it as a conspiracy against them!

Getting unpopularity caused by a choice you made confused with systematic discrimination is shown quite clearly in Glee as well, when the pregnant girl tells Mercedes that now she's obviously pregnant she Understands what it's like to be black. What?

Because apparently getting to do the things that the white kids get to do in every single episode constitutes special treatment.

That's always the case, though, isn't it? If you're not seen as having the right to be treated like the pretty able-bodied white people, then being treated the same as them is presumptuous. It's special treatment in that you want to be treated *better* than Other People Like You. (Heavy sarcasm filter, needless to say.)

...accused disability/women's advocates of "looking for things to be offended by."

Oh, I hate that one. Horrible, horrible silencing tactic. But seriously, why does anyone need to *look* for things to be offended by? There's so much that is so goddamn offensive that there's no need to look further than the bookshelf in the corner. When someone says that, they're basically saying "I know better than you do what ought to offend you. I don't think this should offend you (because it doesn't offend me) and therefore you are overreacting."

As for "stereotypes aren't true", I think that the mindless spouting of stereotypes - and then defending them by saying there's probably some truth in them - is one of the most prevalent forms of discrimination in our allegedly colourblind/genderblind society. Well, at least, among the nice, "non-discriminatory" people, anyway. I think that's what Dan was saying, so maybe I should've shorted this paragraph to "what he said". But you know us women, we never shut up, right?

permalink

go to top

Sister Magpie

at 03:28 on 2010-07-01

If you're not seen as having the right to be treated like the pretty able-bodied white people, then being treated the same as them is presumptuous. It's special treatment in that you want to be treated *better* than Other People Like You. (Heavy sarcasm filter, needless to say.)

Also I think it comes down to the illusion that what the white people get to do in every ep has nothing to do with their being white. Iow, it's not that Mercedes is a backup singer because she's black, it's that Rachel has X,Y and Z about her that gives them a reason to have her on screen a lot and for us to see her story from her pov.

permalink

go to top

Frank

at 05:47 on 2010-07-01

Exactly. W. T. F.

(it could perhaps be considered a fantasy speech of things you wish your dad would say in that situation)

I also think the writer's using this opportunity to speak to those in the audience who are identifying with Finn (who has the absolute right to be pissed at Kurt and call him out on his bullshit though not in such a hateful manner) and who thus may be suffering from gaymanphobia.

The season (network?) suffers from gaymanphobia. For all the talk of Rachel's two gay dads, we never see them. Gay sexuality isn't seen. And the lesbian sexuality that is suggested, is obviously for the het male audience as Santana and Brittany use it to their advantage to seduce/trick Finn.

To be fair, there's not much if any healthy het sexuality either but it is treated as normal. Finn successfully though suggestively loses his virginity to Santana (another fail, this time with racial representation because, you know, Latina's are sexual beings, so exotic.) Will the audience ever see Kurt suggestively lose his virginity (which many will assume to be giving up his butt to a dick instead of giving his dick to a butt)? No, because gayman sex is icky.

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 11:49 on 2010-07-01

*nods*

Although for what it's worth, it's not just a geek male thing. Bad Things Happen To Men Too is depressingly common male reaction to the notion of privilege. Just look at the lovely "men's abortion rights" guys.

Sad, but I suspect largely true.

It's like when people complain that student unions have a women's officer but not a men's officer, or complain that everybody talks about violence against women, but nobody talks about violence against men (they do, they just tend to call it "crime" and there are entire branches of government devoted to dealing with it).

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 12:02 on 2010-07-01Oh, wanted to reply to this point too but somehow lost it:

I'm not sure that's a great example actually. Obviously playing the "I knwo what it's like to be black" card is stupid and offensive, but I think it's a bit iffy to describe Quinn's situation as being entirely down to "a choice she made". Even if we leave out the fact that she was apparently sufficiently drunk when she had sex with Puck that it raises some iffy consent issues, the way she's treated afterwards actually *is* evidence of systematic discrimination because it is, in essence, a form of slut-shaming.

Basically I'm very conscious that "well you shouldn't have got pregnant then" is something that people really do say to women, in one way or another in all sorts of situations (it's a common line taken by pro-lifers for example). There's a certain perspective from which Quinn's arc could be seen as "gets kicked out of her house for being date raped" - I don't think it's entirely fair to describe her as just having made unpopular decisions.

Of course none of that gives her the right to say she "knows what it's like to be black" - on a side note, isn't it interesting that we spend so much time in Glee hearing what it's like to be a minority (what it's like to be in a wheelchair, what it's like to be black, what it's like to be gay) but always from a third party. Mr Shu tells the kids what it's like for Artie to be in a wheelchair, Quinn tells Mercedes what it's like to be black. Kurt's dad gets a pass because he's not actually telling Finn what it's like to be gay, he's telling him what it's like to be a homophobe.

permalink

go to top

Arthur B

at 12:14 on 2010-07-01It's like that party game where you have the name of a mystery person stuck to your forehead and the person to your left has to describe them to you.

permalink

go to top

http://furare.livejournal.com/

at 15:27 on 2010-07-01Fair enough, Dan. That's the only episode of the show I've ever watched, so all I saw was "pregnant white girl tells black girl that teenage pregnancy is Just Like Being Black". I didn't know anything about the extenuating circumstances, just saw the racefail and reacted badly to it. Obviously, the way Quinn is treated is Not Okay either, but pretending that it's in any way equivalent is fail on the same scale as Guy With Unpopular Hobby pretending that this is the same as being a woman.

In my defence, that was the comparison I was making - there is nothing wrong with having sex or getting pregnant, anymore than there is anything wrong with having an unpopular hobby. But Quinn had (at least when I was unaware of possible consent issues) a lot more choice over getting pregnant than Mercedes ever did about being black. That doesn't make it *right* that she's treated the way she is, it just means that it's a different sort of unfair. Which kind of undermines her claim to Understand.

Of course, in the show, this exchange is presented as character development and a heartwarming moment between the two girls.

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 15:40 on 2010-07-01

Fair enough, Dan. That's the only episode of the show I've ever watched, so all I saw was "pregnant white girl tells black girl that teenage pregnancy is Just Like Being Black".

Yeah, I can see how it would be *even more failey* out of context.

In my defence, that was the comparison I was making - there is nothing wrong with having sex or getting pregnant, anymore than there is anything wrong with having an unpopular hobby.

Oh I don't think you've got anything to defend in particular (sorry if I went off on one - I'm afraid I get a bit language police sometimes) I think it's just that I've been spending my off-hours arguing with misogynist assholes on other sites and so was a bit oversensitive. There's a depressing number of people who really do believe that if a bad thing happens to a woman because she "chooses" to have sex then it's ALL HER FAULT. Again, not saying that's you, just being a bit oversensitive.

Also doesn't change the fact that "now I know what it's like to be black" is a failburger with failsauce and a side order of fail.

Of course, in the show, this exchange is presented as character development and a heartwarming moment between the two girls.

Hey, nothing says friendship like appropriation!

permalink

go to top

Sister Magpie

at 15:42 on 2010-07-01

That's the only episode of the show I've ever watched, so all I saw was "pregnant white girl tells black girl that teenage pregnancy is Just Like Being Black". I didn't know anything about the extenuating circumstances, just saw the racefail and reacted badly to it. Obviously, the way Quinn is treated is Not Okay either, but pretending that it's in any way equivalent is fail on the same scale as Guy With Unpopular Hobby pretending that this is the same as being a woman.

Yeah, one of the biggest differences it that, of course, Quinn's condition is temporary. Sure people will probably continue to judge her for getting pregnant, but it was still another example of a line the show is very fond of, the one where the person who is in the position of social power has something happen to them or does something that suddenly makes them feel shamed. And now they "know how it feels" to be somebody who's discriminated against all the time. It's not that we can't sympathize with them as people being picked on, and there are some ways that the two situations are related, but it's not the same thing and the show really does seem to link the two a lot.

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 15:46 on 2010-07-01

It's not that we can't sympathize with them as people being picked on, and there are some ways that the two situations are related, but it's not the same thing and the show really does seem to link the two a lot.

*nod*

The one redeeming quality I can think of in this particular example is that at least it's Quinn's *own* experience which acts as the catalyst for her Important Learning Experience, instead of somebody else's. Unlike say in /Wheels/, where Artie gets screwed so that the other kids can learn an Important Lessson About Disability.

permalink

go to top

Sister Magpie

at 17:33 on 2010-07-01

Also it's probably better that Quinn, being the cheerleader, does usually own all the privileges she has, and yet truly has had things taken away from her. Being pregnant is something other people can see and react to on sight. It's a bit deeper than suddenly being one of the kids who might get a slushy thrown at them rather than being the slushie thrower. Her dad throwing her out because she's now a slut is not only more serious but goes to the aspect of Quinn that always was a minority. In the past she just denied that.

In a way, I felt like the awkward connection of the whole thing to the experience of a black person was more something the show is always trying to do rather than something Quinn herself, based on her character, would say. She'd probably never have noticed that Mercedes was judged on her looks, much less think that she now knows how Mercedes feels.

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 17:50 on 2010-07-01Thinking about it, if they really wanted to have an episode in which Quinn's pregnancy experience what it's like to be Mercedes, they'd have to have an episode in which she stood in the background, didn't sing very much, and sometimes said things like "well you can count my pregnant ass in, mm-hmm" while wagging her finger sassily.

permalink

go to top

Sister Magpie

at 18:04 on 2010-07-01

Thinking about it, if they really wanted to have an episode in which Quinn's pregnancy experience what it's like to be Mercedes, they'd have to have an episode in which she stood in the background, didn't sing very much, and sometimes said things like "well you can count my pregnant ass in, mm-hmm" while wagging her finger sassily.

Very true. She would spend a lot of time being confused at the way her interactions with people never went anywhere and all her conversations with others were about other people whose feelings she was more interested in than her own.

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 18:24 on 2010-07-01

She'd probably never have noticed that Mercedes was judged on her looks, much less think that she now knows how Mercedes feels.

Sorry to keep dwelling on this but:

Also, is it framed as "being judged on her looks?" because if so ... umm ... again that's a rather nasty oversimplification of a hugely complex set of issues. I mean presumably when Quinn's father kicks her out it's not because he's worried she'll get *fat*, it's because she's a filthy dirty slutty mcslutslut. And presumably the creators realize that Mercedes' identity as a black woman has rather more to it than "is female and has dark coloured skin."

permalink

go to top

Sister Magpie

at 18:51 on 2010-07-01

Sorry, no it's not. I just worded that badly because I meant she is judged on an aspect of herself that is visible to strangers. A stranger, for instane, can look at Mercedes and identify her as black and so make judgements based on just seeing her, and so can Quinn with her pregnancy showing. The way I put it it sounded like I meant "her looks" as in whether or not she was conventionally attractive--that's not what she meant.

permalink

go to top

Lexa

at 20:19 on 2010-07-01Oh, there are so many things I hate about this show!

First off, it really, really bugs me that they have taken the idiotic step of confusing sexuality and gender in Kurt. Yes, Kurt is gay. But the writers seem to have taken 'gay' to mean 'camp and gender-confused'. It's the easiest thing in the world to do, and frankly it disappoints me. Wouldn't it be more interesting if one of the football players was discovering he was gay? You could do amazing things with that, and explore really interesting themes - such as the fact that a lot of gay men don't conform to that stereotype. It's only making more and more people think that the stereotypical 'camp gay guy' is universal to the population.

Then there's the wheelchair thing. If you ever tried to stage 'Children Of A Lesser God' professionally with a hearing lead actress instead of a deaf one, there would be uproar. Partly, I suspect, because Equity (the actors' union) would never let them get away with it. I don't know how these things are handled in the States, but it upsets me that nobody had enough clout to solve this problem. Yes, he's good for the character, but if you can re-write for one actor, what's a few tweaks for another going to hurt?

(Oh yes, and of course having a stutter is comparable to being wheelchair-bound. It cuts you off from society in exactly the same way, didn't you know?)

Casting is a thorny issue, but I wouldn't say that colourblind casting works in every case. For instance, the writers must have had character briefs when they began auditioning.

Take the character of Quinn, for example. How different would things be if she were black? She may not have the upper-class background of the current character, she may not have been head of the chastity club (which seemed to be universally white), and there may not have been the family stigma attached to her being pregnant. All of these factors were, arguably, (and within the context of the show, with its' wonderfully divisive society) directly related to the fact that the character was white and upper-class. Even if she's still upper-class, everything changes. Suddenly the focal issues of the character change, and you have to write in the additional new environment of a mixed-race relationship between her and Finn/Mohawk Dude.

No matter how good a black actress may have been for that role, I really don't think that she would ever have been considered, because it would change a lot of things that the writers wanted for the character. And actually, maybe that's fair enough, because some characters are just that specific to their surroundings.

On the other hand, Rachel could have been black and it would have changed NOTHING. Ditto Mr Schuester.

permalink

go to top

Sister Magpie

at 20:41 on 2010-07-01

On the other hand, Rachel could have been black and it would have changed NOTHING. Ditto Mr Schuester.

With Rachel it's even more ironic because part of the joke with her dads was that they don't know which one actually fathered her biologically. She says this, then they show us a picture of her with her two dads, one of whom is black and one of whom is white. So they've already got the set up for her to be biracial, but she's not.

I personally don't have a problem with Kurt being campy just because I think it's dealing with a certain type of personality. Rather than being a person in hiding who's struggling with his sexuality he's out and proud. He himself has accepted he's gay, which can be nice. But it does give them a chance to sometimes act as if gay really is about loving show tunes and fashion and being considered girly, which fits into the whole "we're a bunch of misfits" thing they like to have for a lot of the Glee characters. The club's kind of split between the popular kids and the outcasts according to cliche high school hierarchy. Quinn, the other Cheerios, Finn and Puck are all cool people getting their first taste of doing something officially not cool. Rachel, Mercedes, Artie, non-stutter girl whose name I've just forgotten and Kurt are the nerdy-kids they wouldn't have spoken to before but now are getting to know.

permalink

go to top

Jamie Johnston

at 23:04 on 2010-07-01Thanks for the clarification, Dan! Yes, I see how that works.

[Ducks out before being mistaken for someone who knows something about this programme.]

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 23:30 on 2010-07-01

Take the character of Quinn, for example. How different would things be if she were black? She may not have the upper-class background of the current character

I'm pretty sure you *do* get upper-class black people (if the Fresh Prince taught me nothing else, he taught me that). (Reading ahead, I notice that you mention later that she could still have been upper class, so I don't think you're implying otherwise - I'm just a bit twitchy today).

Quinn's an interesting example in fact for exactly this reason. Making her black would have changed nothing - you *absolutely* get rich, privileged kids from black backgrounds, and making their perfect alpha-teen black would have *genuinely* challenged stereotypes. But they didn't and I suspect that, as you say, the reason they didn't is because they felt that being white was part of who she was, even though I am damned sure that there are black girls who are *exactly* like Finn.

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 23:32 on 2010-07-01

Thanks for the clarification, Dan! Yes, I see how that works.

As an example, there's a running joke throughout the series that the other Asian student in Glee Club is referred to (by staff and students alike) as "other Asian".

You SEE. It's FUNNY because it's SUBVERSIVE because we KNOW IT'S RACIST and NOBODY REALLY ACTS LIKE THAT IN REAL LIFE and certainly it's in no way HARMFUL or OFFENSIVE! Because it's GLEE!

permalink

go to top

Viorica

at 01:39 on 2010-07-02

If you ever tried to stage 'Children Of A Lesser God' professionally with a hearing lead actress instead of a deaf one, there would be uproar.

I wouldn't be so sure. There's a production of

The Miracle Worker

running in Broadway right now with Abigail Breslin playing Helen Keller.

permalink

go to top

Sister Magpie

at 04:30 on 2010-07-02

I wouldn't be so sure. There's a production of The Miracle Worker running in Broadway right now with Abigail Breslin playing Helen Keller

Has there ever been a production of The Miracle Worker, or at least one of note, that didn't have Helen played by a hearing, sighted actress? It seems like Children of a Lesser God is traditionally cast with a deaf actress.

permalink

go to top

Lexa

at 10:02 on 2010-07-02But 'The Miracle Worker' closed early in its' run, and when the casting was announced there were huge complaints from the deaf and blind communities. (Also, I believe that it first opened in the 50s, when attitudes were very different to now) It's a huge betrayal to actors who are genuinely deaf, blind and wheelchair-bound when an actor who is none of these things gets a role like that.

And yep, Sarah in 'Children Of A Lesser God' is always played by a deaf actress - and with good reason. They even found a deaf actress for the movie, which is quite impressive when you think about it.

It genuinely upsets me that the actor playing Artie can walk. It's like they're saying "You know what, nobody in a wheelchair can act." Your agent can't find a wheelchair-bound actor? Find one. Hold open auditions, cast a complete newcomer. It's much easier to do that on television than in theatre.

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 10:17 on 2010-07-02Sorry to be the language police again but if we're going to take a stand against ableism can we avoid using the term "wheelchair-bound" because it

genuinely upsets people

I probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been reading that very blog yesterday evening.

permalink

go to top

Wardog

at 10:58 on 2010-07-02Wow, this is a minefield. I'm scared of opening my mouth....

permalink

go to top

Sister Magpie

at 15:05 on 2010-07-02

But 'The Miracle Worker' closed early in its' run, and when the casting was announced there were huge complaints from the deaf and blind communities. (Also, I believe that it first opened in the 50s, when attitudes were very different to now)

Thanks for that info--I had no idea and I was genuinely wondering about it. Because yes, the original was in the 50s where the idea of hiring a deaf or blind young actress (much less a deaf and blind young actress) would never even have been considered. I remember when Patty Duke, the original Helen, later made a TV movie version where she played Annie Sullivan to Melissa Gilbert's Helen!

So I didn't know if there was some reason that play was not looked at the way CoaLG was, where you assume the part will be played by a deaf actress.

Now I'd really like to see MW with a deaf and blind actress. It would be a totally different performance, I'd imagine. Helen would probably relate to the world far more realistically because the actress would naturally navigate the world with the same senses. Ironically, I'll bet to a lot of people she would appear more able-bodied because of it. She'd be played less as a seeing/hearing person who's been deprived of those senses and more like an individual who uses senses other than seeing and hearing.

permalink

go to top

Viorica

at 15:42 on 2010-07-02

Hold open auditions, cast a complete newcomer.

That's actually the argument I keep hearing- that they

did

hold open auditions, and Kevin McHale just happened to be the best actor for the role. Don't know if I believe it, though.

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 23:23 on 2010-07-02

That's actually the argument I keep hearing- that they did hold open auditions, and Kevin McHale just happened to be the best actor for the role. Don't know if I believe it, though.

I believe it, it's just that I believe their criteria for "best actor" were intrinsically, well, faily.

There's a lot of talk in the DVD special features about how you're looking for the "triple threat" - somebody who can act, sing and dance. Given that later on in the series there's a sequence in which Artie does, in fact, dance in a dream sequence - revealing that Kevin McHale is, in fact, a pretty damned good dancer, it seems depressingly plausible that his ability do dance was part of what landed him the role.

This role, of course, being the role of a wheelchair user whose lifetime dream of being a dancer cannot be fulfilled *because he is a wheelchair user*.

It seems nobody thought that maybe the ability to dance *in a wheelchair* might be a better quality to look for in an actor than the ability to dance *when not in a wheelchair*.

permalink

go to top

Viorica

at 00:06 on 2010-07-03Yeah, that's what my friend tried to convince me of- that if they hadn't cast Kevin McHale, they couldn't have done the Safety Dance scene, so clearly he was a better choice than an actor who was actually in a wheelchair. The problem with this is twofold: one, it is entirely possible to dance while in a wheelchair, and two, having your disabled character constantly fantasize about not being disabled is juuuuust a bit problematic. It'd be like having Kurt fantasize about being straight. "Oh, if only I wasn't a minority!"

permalink

go to top

Sister Magpie

at 00:54 on 2010-07-03

I believe it, it's just that I believe their criteria for "best actor" were intrinsically, well, faily.

And how many people in wheelchairs would bother showing up at an open call, really? I mean, it seems like asking a bit much to expect differently abled actors to assume they're being considered at an open call.

Yeah, that's what my friend tried to convince me of- that if they hadn't cast Kevin McHale, they couldn't have done the Safety Dance scene, so clearly he was a better choice than an actor who was actually in a wheelchair.

It does underline that we're talking about a disabled person as defined by an able-bodied person, doesn't it? If they think it's important that the actor be able to convincingly dance like a person with the use of his legs, if only for dream sequences but not important that he be able to convincingly use a wheelchair like a person who doesn't regularly use his legs. He can't dance in a wheelchair the way the character should be able to do, probably doesn't even use a wheelchair as well as a regular user would.

But they either don't see those problems or assume people will suspend disbelief for them. However when it comes to a fantasy dance sequence they need it to be the actor dancing? Even though the whole fantasy sequence frame would give you plenty of freedom to be as stylized as possible. You could probably even be more creative with it. It's not like Hollywood hasn't done this in many ways over the years when they cast a non-dancer in a dancing role.

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 12:00 on 2010-07-03

But that's *their* fault for being *prejudiced* and assuming that *all able bodied people are ablists*. And we shouldn't support *prejudice*.

It does underline that we're talking about a disabled person as defined by an able-bodied person, doesn't it?

It really does. I can't believe that people *actually* cite the (arguably quite offensive) dream sequence in which Artie imagines what it would be like to be a dancer as a *good and valid* reason that he "had" to be played by an able-bodied actor.

"Hey people with disabilities: we can actually represent what it is like to BE YOU better than YOU CAN"

permalink

go to top

Lexa

at 15:17 on 2010-07-03There are hundreds of acting calls out there where they say something like: "Actor wanted. Must be male, mid-late 30s, minority ethnic background." Or words to that effect. If you need someone black for a role, that's what you do. If they had put out one stating that they needed a wheelchair user, then it would have been no different. Sometimes you need an actor to look a certain way, and there's no problem with specifying that - asking for someone in a wheelchair is just the same.

And I say again: if they can re-write one role for one actor and change it completely (Kurt), would it have been so difficult for them to change one character slightly so that a real wheelchair-user could have done it? They can't say 'he wasn't right for the role' for one guy, and then do a shedload of re-writing for another.

permalink

go to top

Shim

at 08:46 on 2010-07-04

"Actor wanted. Must be male, mid-late 30s, minority ethnic background."

That must be awkward if everyone who turns up is the wrong minority ethnic background.

"I'm sorry, Mr... Spock, was it? We just don't see you as Othello."

permalink

go to top

Jamie Johnston

at 11:17 on 2010-07-04"But that is illogical:

Captain Picard

has played the part, and we are of similar appearance. Is it becos I iz from TOS?"

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 12:47 on 2010-07-04

I don't think you'll get any disagreement here. We're not saying "this is why they did it, and it's legitimate" we're (or at least I'm) saying "this is probably why they did it, and it's fucking offensive".

People get so defensive about it because what we're dealing with here (like the guy in that infuriating Times article Rami just linked to) is *internalized* prejudice. The producers cast Kevin McHale because he was "best" for the role according to their preconceptions about what a "good" actor in musical theatre should be like. Funnily enough, this wound up being somebody white, male, and able-bodied.

permalink

go to top

https://me.yahoo.com/a/weG8lOsgwf6qv3.5HfEtaiu7gZr1mw--#9e4da

at 00:48 on 2010-07-06As a person with disabilities who has

written rather extensively about Glee

(I wrote the post at Bitch discussed in Daniel's original post), I'd like to specifically rebut the claims made about the dream sequence (although this whole conversation has been very interesting).

I see the argument that Artie had to be played by a nondisabled actor to make that sequence possible all the time, by people who are apparently not aware that what wheelchair users can dance. Had they used an actual wheelchair user in that role, the dance sequence could have involved Artie going to dance camp and learning wheelchair dance, and they could have choreographed a superb dance sequence. Instead, they cast themselves into a corner by using a nondisabled actor.

Glee for some reason seems to be under the impression that people can't dance in wheelchairs. They claimed to have invented wheelchair choreography with 'Wheels' despite ample evidence to the contrary; seriously, search YouTube for 'wheelchair dancing,' and I note that they had to use a stuntman for most of Artie's moves in that episode, suggesting some awareness of the fact that there are actually wheelchair athletes that can do things that nondisabled people who are unfamiliar with a chair cannot do.

Pretty much all of the statements made about McHale's casting smell like rotten fish to me. They 'needed an actor who can sing and dance'? Well, Kevin McHale may be able to sing, but he certainly can't dance in a wheelchair, and there are plenty of wheelchair users who are accomplished singers and dancers who would have been a better fit for that role.

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 11:28 on 2010-07-06Hiya, welcome to Ferretbrain.

The whole dream sequence thing is just wrong on every level really isn't it?

It seems like the producers genuinely did believe the fact that Kevin McHale *isn't* a wheelchair user somehow made him uniquely qualified to play one.

permalink

go to top

Jamie Johnston

at 19:54 on 2010-07-06Wow, I know we've had actual known writers commenting on Ferretbrain once or twice before but this is the first time it's someone I've read. Er, hello! [Star-struck.]

I'm amazed to hear they had the gumption to claim to have invented wheelchair choreography. That claim certainly wouldn't have convinced anyone in the UK, where

this wheelchair dance

was all over our televisions many times a day from 2002 to 2006 as a BBC 'ident'.*

* (I don't know whether 'ident' is a term anyone but the BBC uses. It's the little clips a TV channel shows in between programmes or during ad breaks to remind you what channel you're watching.)

permalink

go to top

Melissa G.

at 01:10 on 2010-07-07I would just like to mention that someone I went to college with (who became paralyzed during his sophomore year due to a spinal injury) was recently on Glee. And he wrote a really interesting

blogpost/article

about his experience with the show. Just thought you all would be interested.

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 10:28 on 2010-07-07Obviously it's great that your friend's landed a part in the series, but I'm a bit uncomfortable with his complaining about people criticizing the show. He's entitled to his opinion of course, but so are other people.

I have absolutely no doubt that the cast, crew and writers of /Glee/ are not *consciously* ableist. I have no doubt that they will be very nice to your friend, but it *is* legitimate to criticize them for casting an able-bodied actor as Artie, just as it would be legitimate to criticize them for having a white girl black up to play Mercedes.

permalink

go to top

Melissa G.

at 17:51 on 2010-07-07@Dan

Coming from a background where I've been on both sides of the casting table (I'm an actor and I've helped cast things as well), I can't really agree completely with how heated everyone is about Artie's casting. Yes, it would have been great if they found an actor in a wheelchair to play Artie, but for me, as long as equal consideration was given to both abled and disabled actors, I really can't get too angry about it.

Of course, I realize that my opinion comes with privilege and that, of course, as an able-bodied person, I don't have much right to say anything either way. The reason I linked Zach's article was because I thought there was more meaning to hearing his opinion than mine. But I'm certainly not going to say that anyone is wrong for being upset. It's just not something I personally agree with. And to me, the fact that Zach got a part on the show (even though he was competing against able-bodied actors during the casting session) must count for something?

As far as the dream sequence goes, I highly doubt the show had any idea they would even do that until about two weeks before the episode was shot, and from what I know of TV, it's likely that they just said, "Oh, hey, since Kevin can walk in real life, why don't we do a dream sequence where we see him dance?" Had he actually been a wheelchair-using actor, they obviously wouldn't have done the scene or would have done it a different way. But I might be misunderstanding why exactly people are angry about it.

To be honest though, I have a feeling this is an agree to disagree type of situation.

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 00:47 on 2010-07-08

But I might be misunderstanding why exactly people are angry about it.

I'm not really qualified to speak on behalf of People With Disabilities, but if I had to explain why I *think* people are so upset about it, it would be something like this (this may get long).

One way to view disability is that people with disabilities are just people who can't do some things that other people can do. If you follow this definition then casting able-bodied actors in disabled roles is sort of like casting bilingual people in non-bilingual roles: a complete non-issue.

The other way to view disability (as I understand it) is like race or gender: a part of somebody's identity which has physical manifestations. If you follow this definition casting an able-bodied actor in a disabled role is exactly as bad as having black roles played by white actors in blackface.

By the first definition, discrimination against people with disabilities is effectively a non-issue. Disabled people are by definition less able than nondisabled people, and if your disability prevents you from doing something well ... that's why they call it a disability. Many people (including, I suspect, many people with disabilities) are completely okay with the first definition and that is not something I feel in a position to judge. By this definition providing wheelchair access to a public building is effectively a courtesy you provide to the less fortunate.

For many people, however, it is important to recognize that people with disabilities are a social group that can be excluded by social mechanisms. While people with disabilities may do things differently to able-bodied people, they do actually do all of the same things. To these people *failing* to provide wheelchair access to a building is discrimination just as much as it would be to put a sign in the window saying "no blacks no Irish".

The reason people are so upset by the whole "wheelchair users can't dance" theme which runs through Glee is that it reinforces the notion that exclusion is a natural part of what it means to have a disability. To people who subscribe to the second model of disability "wheelchair users can't dance" is exactly as offensive a statement as "gay people can't have children" or "women can't do science".

As you say, it's an agree to disagree situation, I just thought I'd try (as best I can) to explain what I think people are disagreeing about.

permalink

go to top

Melissa G.

at 05:34 on 2010-07-08

To people who subscribe to the second model of disability "wheelchair users can't dance" is exactly as offensive a statement as "gay people can't have children" or "women can't do science".

Okay, I see. That clears it up. And yes, wheelchair users *can* dance and it would be nice to see them let Artie do that and achieve his dream.

If you follow this definition casting an able-bodied actor in a disabled role is exactly as bad as having black roles played by white actors in blackface.

This is where it gets tricky for me. And I'm not sure I can explain this without sounding horribly insensitive, but I'll give it a go.

For me, saying that only a wheelchair using actor should play a wheelchair using character is an idea that can be taken to rather dangerous place. If you start saying that people can only play roles that they actually are, you're saying that only straight actors can play straight roles or only Jewish actors can play Jewish characters. Anyone with the right look and skills should be considered for any role. The whole point of acting is to become something or someone that you're not. And to take that to another level, I work with a disabled actor in my workshop classes, and I know for a fact that he wants to be considered for parts that are *not* written to be disabled. If we want casting directors to consider him for non-disabled parts, I feel like we need to extend that to "consider everyone who could play this character for the part". And from there, I trust that the casting people will actually pick the person who is most right for the role. And having met many casting directors, trust me, they're really very good at it.

Again, I know people will disagree with me, and they have every right to. I just wanted to add something from an acting viewpoint as well. (Please don't bite my head off....)

permalink

go to top

Shim

at 11:37 on 2010-07-08(warning, long post)

I can see where you're coming from and agree to some extent, but I think there's a couple of issues involved here.

For one thing, there are several types of characteristic that might affect casting.

- There are characteristics that almost inevitably affect the character: age, gender, ethnic group, height, body type, certain physical disabilities. The actor's traits carry across to the character unless massive effort goes into disguising them.

- There are characteristics that genuinely limit what the actor can do, including some physical and mental disabilities, but also ability (singing, multilinguism, etc.). This means that actor can't do specific things, but doesn't mean the character has to be

portrayed

in that way: you can avoid showing those activities, or use stunt doubles and voice doubles.

- There are "hidden" traits that don't necessarily affect the actor's range of ability or come across to the character. These include sexuality, regional origin, social class, and some mental conditions.

The first category tend to restrict what roles people can do because many roles are designated for specific types of person. This is especially the case with historical figures, but also applies to stories in particular settings and particular types of character, or to combinations of characters. Dame Judy Dench cannot credibly play Harry Potter. Arnold Schwarzenegger makes an unconvincing Gandhi. Children are often expected to be the same ethnic group as their parents. A cast of white kids just don't fit in a Chinese epic set in the Qing Dynasty. A very short cast is not a realistic basketball team, and a very fat cast is not a realistic national football team. Theatre tends to be far more generous with this sort of casting than film and TV. Taking the semi-realism of film & TV as the standard, then yes, I'd argue that Jewish actors (or at least, actors who look Jewish*) should play the characters.

The second category makes it difficult for actors to play particular roles. Stephen Hawking doesn't match up to Arnie as Conan and the work required to allow him to play the part would be astronomical (how appropriate). Similarly, if someone has an unshakeable heavy Russian accent, they just may not be suitable as Queen Elizabeth. Deafblind actors may struggle in a Jackie Chan film. However, as I said, you might be able to adapt the part or avoid or double certain activities to make them a viable choice, and of course the severity of these restrictions varies. In some circumstances, though, it seems like a reasonable decision to say a person is unsuitable.

The third category really shouldn't enter into the casting process. They might affect an actor's ability to get into character, but for a good actor, shouldn't define whether or not they can do the part. There's no reason why a straight part has to be played by a straight actor.

However: there is also the issue of equal opportunities, or more specifically fair opportunities.

While many roles could be played by anyone, they are often effectively restricted. Minority actor X might be a great fit for the grandfather role, but if the rest of the family has been cast as a different ethnic group, the directors simply can't see a way to fit X in. Or it would require a significant rewrite, whereas actor Y can slot straight in there. If the plot requires the heroine to have life-changing experiences while running marathons, an actress who can't walk or run is a big obstacle. If it's a full-blown kung fu film, a complete ignorance of kung fu is a problem.

Other roles require specific actor traits, so your Aboriginal family need to look more or less Aboriginal, Henry VIII needs to be a Caucasian bloke, and your basketball players need to be tall.

A third type of role needs someone who can portray a particular type of character, without necessarily needing that trait themselves. This ties in with the third category: traits like personality, nationality, class, education, magical powers, emotions, illness and some disabilities can be portrayed by actors without those traits.

The thing is that while the second type of roles exclude majority actors who don't fit the bill, both the first and second types tend to exclude minorities. This means a far smaller range of opportunities is open to them, which in itself reinforces the problem because it's harder to build up a reputation, experience and contacts. That being the case, I'd say it's even more important to consider them carefully for minority-specific roles, and to be

less

open to rewrites and other adaptive measures for the sake of casting non-minority actors.

Wheelchair users are actually a slightly unusual case, because you don't need to be a wheelchair user to act the part. This puts them at an even greater disadvantage than many other disabilities, because not only are they excluded from many roles not written for wheelchair users; they are also competing with able-bodied actors (who have had more opportunity to get experience and recognition) for roles as wheelchair-using characters. Thus, open casting for wheelchair users reinforces the discrimination. Hence the blackface comparison.

Obviously that doesn't mean they shouldn't be considered for non-chair-using roles, any more than all-women MP shortlists mean women shouldn't apply for other constituencies. It's not really about making casting completely open; it's about preventing passive disadvantage to minorities from the passive advantage and sheer numbers of the majority.

*I appreciate this is getting into the situation where people are concerned by ethnic minority A actors taking roles as ethnic minority B characters. I don't want to discuss that right now, I was just referring to getting a convincing cast.

permalink

go to top

Dan H

at 12:12 on 2010-07-08

Anyone with the right look and skills should be considered for any role.

I think this is the crux of the issue (and again this might get a bit long).

For many years, to a white audience, a man in blackface had the right "look" to play a black man on stage or on film. Even after people came to realize that this was not acceptable, the film and television industry carried on doing the

exact same thing

with Asian characters because, to a white audience as long as somebody has their eyes taped back they look convincingly Asian (scanning down the wikipedia article, people still do this today). Of course to a lot of Asian people this is fantastically offensive.

To a lot of disabled people, Kevin McHale absolutely does *not* have the "right look and skills" to be considered for the role of Artie. For a start he can't dance in a wheelchair which for somebody in a show which is all about singing and dancing is a bit of a flaw. Not only that, but (I am given to understand) many people find the way McHale handles a wheelchair awkward, uncomfortable, and unconvincing. To people who actually use wheelchairs, McHale does not do a convincing job of portraying somebody who spends a large proportion of every day in one.

None of these things are immediately obvious to an able-bodied audience (or, I suspect, to able-bodied casting directors) because we define disability by inability, and think that being a wheelchair-user means "not being able to walk" instead of "being able to use a wheelchair". The reason many people find "crip drag" offensive is because they feel it should not be up to able-bodied people to decide what disabled people are supposed to look like.

I absolutely believe that Kevin McHale was chosen because he had the right look and skills to play Artie, but I also believe that what people considered to be the "right look and skills" to play Artie was based on quite a lot of harmful misconceptions about disability.

Put it this way. Look at the following picture

of the cast

. Perhaps I'm just being guided by hindsight but just looking at those pictures (which are all head-and-shoulder shots) you know *instantly* which of those characters is "wheelchair kid" - it's the pale gawky looking one because that's what able-bodied people think disabled people look like. It's even more apparent in the

DVD Cover

where he is actually pulling the "biting your own ear" face I describe in the article.

If I was a casting director, Kevin McHale is exactly the person I would cast as wheelchair kid. He looks exactly how I expect disabled people to look (pale, unhealthy, and uncomfortable) and his awkwardness in a wheelchair wouldn't even register with me, because I *expect* disabled people to move awkwardly because, well, they're disabled.

And to take that to another level, I work with a disabled actor in my workshop classes, and I know for a fact that he wants to be considered for parts that are *not* written to be disabled. If we want casting directors to consider him for non-disabled parts, I feel like we need to extend that to "consider everyone who could play this character for the part".

I think you're in danger of falling into the "reverse prejudice" trap here.

There is a big difference between disabled actors wanting to be considered for roles that are not specifically written as disabled, and non-disabled actors wanting to be considered for roles that are. Not least of those differences is the fact that while disabled actors are routinely *not* considered for roles that aren't specifically written for them, they have to be especially protective of those that are.

To come back to the race example, it's the difference between a black actor wanting to be considered for the role of Dr Who and a white actor wanting to be considered for the role of Martin Luther King Jr. One involves taking a character who habitually (and for no especially good reason) is cast as white and asking for the opportunity for equal treatment. The other involves asking people to accept that one of the most famous and significant figures in the civil rights movement can be adequately represented by a white guy.

There is a big, big difference between actors with disabilities, or actors of colour, or female actors, asking to be considered for parts in which race, disability, and gender play no significant role, and white, able-bodied male actors asking to take roles which *are* specifically written as disabled, non-white, or female. (I should add that gender isn't a great example here, because regendering roles is slightly different to merely whitewashing them).

What's offensive about blackface, and about yellowface, and about crip drag, is the notion that "white and able-bodied" is some kind of master template from which everything else can be derived. A black man is not just a white man with dirty skin. An Asian person is not just a white person with their eyes pulled back. A disabled person is not just an able-bodied person sitting down.

Should every actor who *can* play a role be considered for that role? Absolutely. But for many people an able bodied actor *can not* play the role of a wheelchair user. For many people Kevin McHale *is not* convincing as Artie, because Artie is supposed to be a wheelchair user and Kevin McHale *obviously* isn't.

And having met many casting directors, trust me, they're really very good at it.

I'm sure they are, but that does not mean they are without prejudice, or do not have privilege.

Kevin McHale was an excellent choice for Artie in the sense that he looks exactly the way the average, able-bodied audience member expects a wheelchair user to look. He was also an excellent choice for a character whose entire arc seems to be about how having a disability means having a less complete life. Insofar as Artie's function as a character is to be tragic and sympathetic, he is well cast.

The problem a lot of people seem to have with Kevin McHale is not that he did not fit the character per se, but that the character itself is a harmful jumble of stereotypes.

I hope this doesn't come across as biting your head off, just still trying to explain why I think the criticisms of McHale are legitimate.

permalink

go to top

Sister Magpie

at 15:52 on 2010-07-08

Just wanted to say I thought this whole post summed up the issues really well, at least the way I see them at play. If we lived in a world where the majority of people used wheelchairs, McHale's awkwardness at handling one would probably be a no-brainer. That kind of unconscious thinking happens a lot with the white able-bodied template. Like as I often said w/regard to the Avatar casting, nobody ever considered making the LOTR cast there were no discussions about Middle Earth not really being Europe and therefore the entire Fellowship should be Asian--on the contrary both there and Harry Potter it was agreed right away that convincingly white and British was the starting point for everyone.

Basically, I think we're trying to work towards a comfortable balance between blind casting where the audience is expected to accept an actor whose race isn't supposed to be taken literally and specific casting where race is an issue.

I do remember once someone on lj making a horribly misguided (imo) post where she seemed to literally be arguing that whatever specific background an actor had, that was what the character had. She was arguing that it was stupid for people to talk about the Jimmy Smits character on The West Wing being the first Latino US president when Bartlett was a Latino president--because Martin Sheen is. Even though Bartlett's ethnicity was a stated part of his character. *That* I think was definitely a case of the slippery slope where things are getting silly.

Also, we shouldn't forget that the show does have an actual disabled cast member in a recurring role--the Cheerio who has Down Syndrome. Perhaps Life Goes On changed things when it came to that particular condition, or maybe it's that it's got such a distinctive physical look (distinctive enough that it's almost like a wheelchair only it's not a prop or a costume), or again maybe it's that people with Down Syndrome have proven themselves enough as a group as actors, but I would have been surprised if they'd cast that role with a person who didn't have Down Syndrome.

permalink

go to top

Sister Magpie

at 15:58 on 2010-07-08Also while I'm blabbing on, let me go off on a tangent. But I wonder if another unconcious prejudice that can come into play is a discomfort with the disabled. Of course I can't say this was at all a factor in the Glee casting. But I think there are situations where able-bodied people are just made a little less comfortable or a little more nervous when dealing with someone who has different limitations. So that could probably also weigh in favor of preferring the able-bodied actor. Obviously not all the time, as the actor who wrote the blog is disabled and got a part--though even there if this kind of thing was an unconscious factor people would probably feel a lot more confident hiring someone for one episode than as a series regular.

Again, I don't want to make it seem like I'm accusing the Glee cast of doing this, especially not consciously. But it seems like from things I've read disabled people say, this is something they deal with.

permalink

go to top

Melissa G.

at 17:24 on 2010-07-08I can't really argue with anything anyone is saying. And it makes more sense to me to call the character of Artie offensive or insulting than to harp on about the casting choice, in my opinion, but that's getting into semantics.

I still can't completely agree with it, but that may be because I Just Don't Get It, which I'm willing to accept and admit that maybe my opinion is a little less significant given my privilege.

But I do want to say that I appreciate everyone responding to me in a calm, non-defensive manner so we could have an actual conversation about what I think is a complicated issue. But I'm not sure I particularly have anything more insightful to say about it at this point. (Also, watch Zach's episode; he did a good job!! ^_^)

permalink

go to top

Jamie Johnston

at 19:09 on 2010-07-08Yeah, it's been a really interesting discussion. And I think we'd probably all agree that casting is only part of the problem, and not the biggest part. (It's certainly only one of many complaints in Dan's original article.) Even if casting were never affected by prejudice in any way (which I don't think anyone here suggests), we'd still be left with far too many series that are written to either ignore the diversity of people and experiences in the world or deal with that diversity using token characters and cheap stereotypes.

And we'd also probably all agree that the workings of prejudice are much more easily seen over the broad sweep than when looking at any single creative decision. Casting Kevin McHale as a wheelchair-using character would be much less problematic than it is (however much that may be) if the show had lots of actors with disabilities, or if it didn't but there were plenty of other TV series that did, or even if there weren't that many actors with disabilities on our screens but there were enough suitable parts being written to encourage more young people with disabilities to become actors.

permalink

go to top

Shim

at 08:42 on 2010-07-09It's always difficult when you're talking about generalities but focusing on a specific example. Quoting Dan in a vaguely web-incestuous way:

"I don't think you can look at any single work of fiction and say "that character, right there, should have been black".

permalink

go to top

Jamie Johnston

at 12:41 on 2010-08-17The casting issue, in

Glee

and more generally, on

This ain't livin'

from a few days ago.

permalink

go to top

Arthur B

at 12:42 on 2010-08-17A little happy news: I just started watching

Breaking Bad

, which includes a character with cerebral palsy played by an actor who actually has cerebral palsy. At last.

permalink

go to top

http://someobsessive.livejournal.com/

at 10:06 on 2010-08-20I just wanted to let you know that I have included several quotes from your articles on my new tumblr:

http://wholesomeobsessive.tumblr.com/

if you would like to check it out.

Sister Magpie quotes are also there.

Thank you for your articles, and for directing me over to deathtocapslock. I am being very well entertained this summer.

:-)

permalink

go to top

Robinson L

at 15:00 on 2010-12-21Still not seen

Glee

, and still probably never will, but do have a few thoughts. One of them being that Noah Antwiler of The Spoony Experiment

also took exception to The Immortals

. In detail.

And while I haven't see the show, ptolemaeus watched the first season with our cousin last year, and she had the same problems with

Throwdown

(the Sue-Sylvester-tries-divide-and-conquer-tactics episode) you bring up. Color me unsurprised.

Also, did I dream up the part where somebody (and I could've sworn it was Dan), said something about Sue Sylvester later being depicted as more sympathetic, and that this actually makes the show's problems *worse* because—if I remember the argument correctly—now it's a likable person saying and thinking all those nasty things? That struck me as a bit odd, because while I can sort of see the logic behind it, I've always viewed treating nasty characters sympathetically and not just saying “ehn, they're just evil,” as a good thing. I didn't dream all that up, did I?

Dan: Partially it was a holdover from an earlier version of the article that was going to focus more on the "lampshading" element of Glee.

Was that version also going to go more into what exactly the “Trouble With Deconstruction” is? From all I've heard, it sounds more like the trouble is that the show lampshades it's own stereotypes without really questioning or subverting (deconstructing) them.

permalink

go to top

https://profiles.google.com/117083096049946525193

at 02:46 on 2013-07-07Oh, this has only gotten far worse as the show has hit it's fourth season.

First, Brittany and Santana did become a couple and broke up. Brittany, being bisexual, decided to date Sam (a season 2 character), but was hesitant because the lesbian blogging community was going to hurt him. I wish I was making this up. AfterEllen had a riot on that. Sorry we're upset that our representation isn't on screen anymore. And as a lesbian myself, I do have to say, it was really frustrating how for the rest of the series, except maybe two times, they completely forgot those two dated.

The biggest fail though is the transgender (mtf) black woman named Unique. First of all, it took me a while to figure out whether she was supposed to be transgender or a drag queen (because she talks in the third person regularly, and talks about Unique like a persona, not as herself). Second, SO MANY TIMES in the show, people are calling Unique Unique/Wade (the male name). Now, I know a million idiots across America are going to think this is acceptable behavior. And finally, they made her a catfish. The transgender as deceptive/predatory is a pretty common trope, and I think a damaging one, for everyone involved.

And the final Glee minority fail. Unique is also a big girl, and is basically the replacement for Mercedes. Brittany literally calls Unique Mercedes, SEVERAL TIMES. Uuuuugh. . .

permalink

go to top

Fishing in the Mud

at 23:41 on 2013-07-07Ryan Murphy can totally make fun of lesbians and transgender people because he's gay. Isn't it great?

Yeah, no. What a fucking worthless hack.

#Ferretbrain #Dan H #Minority Warrior #Glee

1 note · View note

aion-rsa · 3 years

Text

Animorphs: A Panel By Panel Comic Breakdown of Adapting a Scene From The Visitor

https://ift.tt/39BH5q6

Reading the first Animorphs graphic novel was a delightful shock. Not only had one of the greatest sci-fi novels for kids finally returned in a new form but it was also extremely faithful to the original book. Every scene was lifted from the novel and almost all of the dialogue was kept intact. A few small changes were made to remove dated pop culture references or to better fit the visual medium but overall it’s easily one of the closest adaptations of any piece of media out there.

So how is it done? Taking a whole novel and turning it into a graphic novel isn’t a smooth process, especially for a sci-fi series like Animorphs that features a ton of internal first-person narration.

Covering the adaptation of a whole book would need a book of its own to cover so instead artist Chris Grine gave us detailed insight on adapting a specific scene from the second Animorphs novel, The Visitor. Armed with an original copy of the novel, we really got into the nitty gritty of changes, Rachel’s stink face, the horrors of morphing, and even got a few never before heard pieces of info about the upcoming graphic novel.

(For anyone who wants to compare the comic pages to the original novel, the scene these pages are adapting are pages 33-36 of The Visitor.)

DEN OF GEEK: Before we get to these specific pages, I want to talk about the process at the very beginning, which may impact how these pages are handled. So you sit down, you’ve got a copy of The Visitor. Do you first read through the whole thing and figure out how you want to tackle it and what you may want to throw out?

CHRIS GRINE: So here I finished the first Animorphs graphic novel. Then I moved to the first book in this other series I’m working on. While I’m doing that, I’m listening to the audio book for the second Animorphs book. I’m listening to podcasts and I’m doing my research thing. It gives me time to be in my head while I’m trying to think of the different scenes. It’s nice that I didn’t have to just rush right into the next book because I just had time to give it more thought.

That’s basically how I do it. Just as much time as I can to be thinking about it beforehand.

Once I saw the finished comic pages I sat down and really compared them to the book and that really helped illuminate what you have to do for every page of this graphic novel. You’re not just reading a page, drawing a page, you’re taking in the context of the whole scene. Like here, it’s raining but as I’m reading the book it only mentions it’s raining after the scene is done.

That’s how a lot of these things go. I’ve got to really read the whole thing several times before I can even start penciling, because sometimes they drop the warnings after the chapter.

So once you’ve read the original novel several times, do you print out the pages and make notes? You mentioned you also have a spare book to make notes in.

Well, basically I go chapter by chapter, and since the chapters are anywhere from five to 10 pages or so, I’ll make sure I have a full idea what the environment is. Like in that particular scene she’s going to be walking down the street that’s kind of a boulevard. There are guys that are bothering her in the car, it’s probably a storefront type thing. That’s what I had in my head, that there’s alleys, this is definitely a small downtown. I get that in my head. Then within the book I take a highlighter and I’ll highlight all the dialogue, just the dialogue.

Movies

ThunderCats Movie Director Promises “The ‘80s Cartoon Brought to Life”

By Shamus Kelley

Avatar: The Last Airbender – What Can We Expect From the New Avatar Studios?

By Shamus Kelley

I’ve got the book next to me while I’m penciling the pages and I’ll jot down little bits and pieces of the dialogue. So at least I know where I’m at on the page. I start doing panels, putting in dialogue, and try to see how the page goes. I know a lot of people probably give it a lot more thought than that, but I just go and then if I hit a wall, then it’s pretty easy to just back up and come at it from a different angle. But that’s the general idea of how I do a lot of it.

In the book, this is a very internal scene for Rachel as this guy is chasing her. She’s having a lot of thoughts about it but in a graphic novel you’ve got to sell most of that in a look. When you read, say, a paragraph of internal thought do you think about how you can sum that all up in a look? How do you make sure it conveys all the thoughts that can’t be put on the page?

Well, with Rachel, it’s pretty easy because I love giving her a stink face. She gets pissed. I really enjoy giving her that little snarl on her face. But if Marco says something that’s obviously out of line, all she’s got to do is look at him and he shuts up. We don’t need half a page about why Marco is so immature and why he needs to keep his mouth shut. Like you said, it’s all in that look. I try to do that as much as I can because it cuts down on word count.

So let’s get to the morphs on the second page where the guy chasing Rachel says he’s not gonna hurt her. We see the elephant in the shadows and then she jumps out. In the original book, there’s a whole description about Rachel thinking about morphing and the whole process of morphing is described. Here though you cut it down to that one shot of the tusks in the darkness. When she jumps out and is that big half morphed version of herself, it’s very accurate to the description in the books. Was the half morphed image the most important thing you wanted to convey here?

Yeah, I knew that that was going to be important, but I was trying to think of it more like a movie scene. If you’re watching a movie, some dude runs and follows this girl who you know is going to kick his ass. If you’ve read the earlier book you know that she’s not messing around, but he follows her into a dark alley.

Then she goes way back into shadow where you can’t see her. He thinks he’s got the upper hand. I was trying to think timing wise that he can’t see her. He thinks she’s scared and she’s hiding from him. There’s that moment where he thinks he’s definitely in charge. Then she just explodes out of there and he drops his wallet and basically turns into a baby and runs away. I played up the comedy after that. That part wasn’t in the book but I definitely wanted to make him look like an idiot right after that.

I was going to ask about that. In the book, he’s just scared. He runs away. Here he talks with his buddy a bit and they both drive off. Adding that comedic element and making him look like a complete fool, that’s such an interesting change to me. And you give him someone to talk to, because again, you don’t have that internal monologue.

I knew even before I started the book, that this was one of the scenes I was going to have to change. What you don’t know, because you’ve only seen these pages, is the opening of the book where it’s those two hunters that are shooting at them? The same guys.

They’ve had a really bad day. They’re shooting stuff and the bird show up and take the dude’s gun and throws it in the ocean and take the other guy’s drink. Obviously they’re not drinking beer like they were in the book, they’re drinking soda. His buddy spills his soda all over his good shirt. His buddy is constantly going, “It’s not right for the birds to be stealing your guns,” so they’re really mad.

Then I picture the next day, they’re trying to pick up chicks out here [in this scene]. They’re getting ready to have another bad animal day. I just love that. It might be an ongoing joke. Just these two idiots are always in the wrong place at the wrong time, and animals are constantly attacking them. They just don’t know why. So that’s what I was tying it together with.

Having them be 16 probably since they’ve got a truck but not very smart either, it kept the situation in this scene the same but it wasn’t quite as scary.

Obviously, the original books took kid readers seriously and these graphic novels are doing the same thing. But with a visual medium where you’re depicting a real world horror instead of sci-fi horror, you don’t want to completely terrify the kid readers.

And book two, there’s a lot of emotional stuff going on with the cat and with Melissa being just destroyed basically. She thinks her parents hate her. Then at the end with Chapman in the construction site where he’s reduced to a sniveling, crying person laying in the mud, begging. It’s awful. There’s just so many heart wrenching moments in the story that I thought playing up some comedy when I could, or add just a little bit more, especially at the beginning, would maybe lighten it up just a little bit.

Hopefully that’s the consensus after the book comes out.

On the final page of this preview, we see Rachel morphing back. That image of her morphing back from elephant feels like it’s right out of the original covers of the books. When you draw morphs, are you taking inspiration from those covers, especially the mid morph faces?

Yeah, absolutely. In the first book with the first two or three morphs, I tried to make sure I showed as much as I could. Then it was easy to do a shorthand later when they needed to morph because it could almost be like it was off camera. You don’t have to see it. Sometimes it’s more exciting if a tiger just bursts out of somewhere and you didn’t see it happening but you were expecting it anyway. It also saves me time and saves page count.

But there are a few scenes at the beginning of the second book when they’re birds and they’re morphing back. There are like two or three pages of just them morphing back and it’s awful (laughs). So I think people are going to get their fill of body horror pretty quick.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Fans have always known about the body horror but in recent years there have been all these memes about the mid morph face from the covers. Now it seems like the graphic novels are leaning right into that.

It’s still my style, but I still try to make them as terrible as I can. There’s a description in the second book when they’re turning back from birds and one of the description is like, “There’s teeth. The beak is becoming teeth.” It’s awful. So I was like, I’m drawing that for sure. That sounds terrible and that’s definitely going in the book. So I try to have as much fun with them as I can.

Is there anything else you can tell us about the second book? I know it’s not going to come out for a while, but anything that you’re excited for the fans to see?

The first book felt like, if it was a movie, it was a popcorn blockbuster summer movie, right? Lots of big set pieces and stuff. The second one feels smaller and more intimate, and there are a lot more opportunities for character development, or just some conversations. I’m so proud of some of the scenes where I felt like I really got to nail those scenes. Like I did justice to those scenes.

The scene with Chapman towards the end? It’s terrible. He’s crying and he’s a mess. Since it’s been raining all day, it’s not really mentioned in the book, but that construction site is just mud. He’s falling down in the mud. So he’s also half covered in mud and he’s crying and he’s just a mess, and Visser Three’s just being a total ass to him.

Those are scenes I was really looking forward to doing, but when I got to them, I slowed way down. I was like, okay, this is an important scene and I got to do it. I know it’s not really telling you anything new about the second book, but I just felt like the stakes were raised on more of an emotional level. That’s something that I was really excited about.

In case you missed it, make sure to read the first part of this interview with Grine where he more broadly talks about adapting the challenges of adapting the books and what’s to come in the future. The Visitor (Animorphs Graphic Novel #2) is now up for pre-order on Amazon.

The post Animorphs: A Panel By Panel Comic Breakdown of Adapting a Scene From The Visitor appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3ujUsTM

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

1 note · View note

elfrootaddict · 4 years

Text

Fic Writer Questions

Thank you so much for the tag @in-arlathan 💕 this is definitely the first time I’ve had to think about things like this - this is going to be fun!

I personally don’t know a lot of writing friends on Tumblr (because I’m very new to the world of fic writing - well, writing in general 🤪) but I’ll tag whoever (even though I think most are strictly artists?)

Anywho, those who can/ want to, feel free to answer these and be sure to tag me back - would love to read what you have to say :) @sopml @noire-pandora @tragic-lavellan @felassan @followingthewolf @an-egg-broke-my-heart @rubihowl @faelavellan @lethendralis-paints @himluv @serial-chillr @soulconsumingginge @thedreadblog

~~~

I’ve cropped my answers for the sake of people’s feed 👇

1. Do you enjoy the occasional trope? Do you enjoy them all? Or do you hate tropy stuff with a passion?

Firstly, I hope the tropes I mention are actually tropes (but apologies in advance if I what I ramble on about isn’t officially a trope). But I guess I don’t mind the occasional trope but normally it would be nice to have a story without it - I like surprises and unexpected events. I guess as a teenager I loved your Boy-Meets-Girl tropes a lot, but now I honestly hate them. Predictability in a story, to an extent, is a mood killer for me and I find myself bored. I know it’s hard to expect writers to essentially “reinvent the wheel” when it comes to writing unpredictable and trope-free stories, so I completely understand how some tropes are almost hard to avoid but if a story is solely reliant on tropes then I’m not interested.

2. Which tropes are you favorites? Which ones do you avoid? Have you written any yourself or is there one you really want to write?

Favorite Tropes: I don’t know the “official” name of tropes but I will just describe them as best as I can in no particular order :)

Opposits Attract: From the top of my head I think of Hermione&Ron, Monica&Chandler, Ross&Rachel, Repunzel&Flynn and Bull&Dorian when it comes to this particular trope. I think so many REAL relationships are between two people who are so dissimilar in a lot of ways. That the weaknesses in the one character are the other character’s strength (e.g. one is disciplined and the other isn’t). One relationship I wish happened canonically is Zuko&Katara from Avatar. In saying that, when two characters who are so grossly different get together then that’s something I struggle to wrap my head around as it feels forced and unnatural. But if done right, you know that those two lovers are together because of how REAL their love is for one another despite their differences, and that they aren’t in for what they “get out of it” and how “easy it is” - they’re in it because they love each other so truly and accept all the good, bad and ugly in between.

Star-Crossed/ Lovers in Denial: I guess it goes without saving for me (being in Solavellan hell and all) but having two characters fall in love almost against their better judgement and how they deny their feelings for so long is something I really enjoy. And guess what? All my examples from the top of my head are all Dragon Age ones 😅; Loghain&Rowen, YourWarden&Alistair, Hawke&Fenris and Trevelyn&Cassandra are relationships that blossom without at least one of them looking for it and how it catches them off guard. And when they do finally admit their feelings its a really big, spontaneous and passionate moment. However, I hate it when they deny their feelings for too long - in this case I’m talking about Blackwall’s romance as an example. When I watched Blackwall’s romance, I got really frustrated with his constant “No, I can’t” that it really made me want to scream lol. Oh! Just thought of another one that isn’t a DA related; Elizabeth&DrDarcy :)

The Underestimated: I enjoy seeing a character underestimated and then proving everybody wrong by being the most powerful, strongest and most incredible one in the room while everybodies mouths are agape. But not by turning into the bad guy, but by simply showing the others that they shouldn’t be underestimated. I think of Toph, Aang and Solas in this regard. And even better, is when the characters don’t need to “show off” their power. I loved how with Toph she was the most powerful Earth Bender but was the smallest and youngest person in the room, and everybody she met underestimated her! And with Aang being you know... the most powerful person in their world and is merely a child. Then of course, we all know Solas’s story: creating the Veil, that Mind Blast in Trespasser, petrifying people to stone, killing dwarves in their sleep and having his Dread Wolf form living in the Fade... yeah. Total sucker for underestimated and not-your-typical powerful character.

Tropes I Avoid: Again, don’t know the “official” names and from the top of my head :)

The Dumb Blonde: Whenever I see a superficial, stupid blonde woman I get really mad. I actually take it personally as I was called a “dumb blonde” myself growing up for simply having blonde hair. I’m sure you’ve heard of “blondes have more fun, but brunettes remember it the next day” joke and omg... it Really. Grinds. My. Gears.

The Mirror in a Horror: I almost never watch horrors, but whenever I see anyone stare into a mirror, open the cabinet and then close it to find somebody suddenly standing behind them, it really makes me roll my eyes back into my head. Look, I still close my eyes because I can’t hand jump scares (even when I know they’re coming) but even still... lol

The Hero Survives: Perhaps an unrealistic expectation, but whenever a story has the blatant knight-in-shining-armor hero, you know from the beginning that they aren’t going to die. That’s why the Red Wedding made me question everything I knew lol. It was totally unexpected! But when you get to the end of a movie and the hero is fighting the bad guy; at first the hero is winning, then the bad guy gets the upper hand and they (the creators) try to fool you into thinking the hero will die (aka the Bad Guy Monolauge) but then suddenly the hero fights harder and wins... ugh... However, I’m not saying the hero must always die, but I like the idea of the hero dying and somehow surviving quite unexpectedly. I think of Ciri from the Witcher: Geralt (and you) totally thought she died but she didn’t! Also, Harry Potter - he died but then also managed to survive!

The Good-Guy to Bad-Guy: I can’t stand the origin of a lot of your “typical” bad guys. This is kind of linked to “The Underestimated” trope I like, but I can’t stand it when they use it as the “explanation” or “excuse” of why the bad guy is the antagonist . I think of Ursula from the Little Mermaid, Hades from Hercules and Maleficent. I think the creators are perhaps trying to get you to sympathize with them (and I do feel sorry for Corypheus, but that’s another post lol), and their origin stories do tug at the heart strings, I just get frustrated with characters who choose to take the “evil” route when they are underestimated, treated poorly or bullied. I guess because in reality there are so many different ways one can deal with being treated poorly other than being a horrible person but yeah... Simultaneously however, what’s the solution? Where should antagonist’s come from? What should their origin story be? And honestly, I don’t actually have a solution XD I guess it depends on the origin story and what caused them to “turn bad” for it not to bother me so much. Because usually you can smell the antagonist a mile away when stories do this.

“American” High Schools: What I mean by this, is that I’m sick and tired of the main characters in high school movies or shows falling into the “jock”, “nerd”, “cheerleader”, “geek”, “perve”, “virgin” or “bullied” category. Especially - ESPECIALLY - the Jock & Cheerleader teasing the protagonist and the protagonist usually being in love with the Jock’s Cheerleader Girlfriend, and then his best friend being the flamboyant, funny one... just no. NO MORE. As soon as I see any TV show or movie use this trope as it’s main “hook” I avoid it like the plague. I understand that perhaps there are a lot of high schools where people perhaps do “fit” into one of these categories but I’m sorry, people are far more complex than that and they are more than just being “the jock” or the “cheerleader” or the “geek”. And of course what goes with all of that is the typical choice of dress, talk and attitude associated with falling into those categories: your “jock” with his jacket, the “cheerleader” with her short skirt, the “geek” whose awkward and wears glasses. Just... enough. That’s enough.

Rain at a Funeral: I don’t think I need to elaborate on this lol

Writing Tropes: I haven’t actually thought about writing anything other than my Halla & Wolf series right now but perhaps if I had to think of a trope I wouldn’t mind tackling, it would be a Lovers in Denial one. I want to write characters that really hate each other in the beginning but are forced to interact and overcome certain obstacles with the help of the other, and then they see other sides to that character they weren’t expecting to see and then they fall in love almost begrudgingly. But then their love is so passionate and real that you can feel how true it is in your bones because of how they got there. Just like if Zuko&Katara got together. Their story and how I think should have ended would be a great source of inspiration for me should I write something like that.

3. Do you have different preferences for reading than you have for writing? If so, is there a reason for it?

I’m currently reading through the DA books in chronological order (I’m currently on Last Flight) and the last time I read anything prior to that was all of Meg Cabot’s books - which was like, 10 years ago. But I think that the type of books I enjoy reading are fantasy ones and after the Little Women movie, I really want to read the book now. And I also loved reading Jane Auston’s books. But it’s hard to answer this one because I haven’t written anything other than my Halla & Wolf series and the last time I did attempt at writing my own stories was when I was like... 12? Hehe

~~~

Phew! I did NOT expect this to get so long but who knew? I certainly didn’t know I had so much to say 😅 thanks for reading all my babble if you managed to get through all of it lol this was certainty fun to do!

#Fic Writer Questions #Tropes #FavouriteTrops #Tropes I Avoid #Fan Fic Writer #NOT Dragon Age #Get to know me

0 notes

beneaththeharvestmoon · 7 years

Note

1-216

u fuck.

You know what this is? This is a challenge and I am definitely taking it.

1: My name? Rachel2: Do I have any nicknames? In real life? Some coworker’s jokingly call me Raquel. Lol3: Zodiac sign? Pisces4: Video game I play to chill, not to win? Right now it’s a game called Kingdom5: Book/series I reread? The Maze Runner 6: Aliens or ghosts? Ghosts7: Writer I trust enough to read whatever they write? I’m not sure what this means? I don’t have a particular author8: Favourite radio station? 106.9 or 104.59: Favourite flavour of anything? Vanilla or chocolate usually 10: The word that I use all the time to describe something great? Awesome11: Favourite song? Right now it’s probably LA Devotee by Panic! At the Disco12: The question you ask new friends to get to know them better? What do you do in your free time?13: Favourite word? Dude. 14: The last person who hurt me, did I forgive them? This is a hard one to answer. No?15: Last song I listened to? Sunday Morning by Maroon 516: TV show I always recommend? Avatar the Last Airbender17: Pirates or ninjas? Pirates18: Movie I watch when I’m feeling down? Oooo I dunno. Any Disney movie. 19: Song that I always start my shuffle with/wake-up song/always-on-a-loop song? Right now it’s Ghost Town by Adam Lambert20: Favourite video games? Anything Zelda related21: What am I most afraid of? SPIDERS22: A good quality of mine? Um. It used to be patience but lmao. I guess I’m understanding?23: A bad quality of mine? I misunderstand people’s actions a lot and think they’re mad at me/hate me when it’s not like that at all24: Cats or dogs? Dogs. I love cats but I’m allergic 25: Actor/actress you trust enough to watch whatever they’re in? Mmm I don’t have a favorite. 26: Favourite season? Fall27: Am I in a relationship? Not currently28: Something I miss? I miss being a kid. Having the naivety of youth and seeing nothing wrong with the world 29: My best friend? Cig, Paige, or Ashley30: Eye colour? Hazel31: Hair colour? Naturally brunette, but it’s blue and black right now32: Someone I love? My parents?33: Someone I trust? My friends?34: Someone I always think about? Me. Lmao jk. My friends again. I know, I’m interesting. 35: Am I excited about anything? Not really. 36: My current obsession? A new anime that I really want to finish. 37: Favourite TV shows as a child? What age are we talking here? Because it was definitely Blues Clues for a while, then probably Courage the Cowardly Dog. I used to watch Kids Next Door too. 38: Do I have someone of the opposite sex that I can tell everything to? Yes39: Am I superstitious? Sometimes40: What do I think about most? –41: Do I have any strange phobias? Clowns and Geese. I also have tryptophobia or however you spell it???42: Do I prefer to be in front of the camera or behind it? Behind43: Favourite hobbies? Writing, watching YouTube 44: Last book I read? I FORGOT THE NAME OF IT45: Last film I watched? Split46: Do I play any instruments? I used to play the clarinet47: Favourite animal? Wolf or a lion48: Top 5 blog on Tumblr that I follow? –49: Superpower I wish I could have? The ability to change into any animal I want50: How do I destress? Watch YouTube, shut myself in my room51: Do I like confrontation? No52: When do I feel most at peace? When I’m alone usually53: What makes me smile? Spongebob memes usually |:54: Do I sleep with the lights on or off? Off who tf sleeps with them on?????55: Play any sports? No56: What is my song of the week? UH I DUNNO57: Favourite drink? Honestly? I just really like ice water58: When did I last send a handwritten letter to somebody? Paiges last birthday59: Afraid of heights? Yes60: Pet peeve? God I have so many61: What was the last concert I went to see? I DUNNO BUT I’m ABOUT TO GO SEE P!ATD IN APRIL AND I AM EXCITED62: Am I vegetarian/vegan/pescatarian? no, gimme my steak63: What occupation did I want to do when I was younger? Either a k-9 police officer or a truck driver lmao64: Have I ever had a friend turn enemy? Yes65: What fictional universe would I like to be a part of? Fuck I think of this all the time and I don’t have an answer???66: Something I worry about? Everything lmao67: Scared of the dark? If I watched something scary recently68: Who are my best friends? Didn’t I just answer this?69: What do I admire most about others? Kindness. 70: Can I sing? I can match pitch but I don’t think I have a good voice71: Something I wish I could do? Travel more72: If I won the lottery, what would I do? Buy a house/pay off my parents house/save it all73: Have I ever skipped school? Definitely74: Favourite place on the planet? My bed75: Where do I want to live? Anywhere but the US at this particular moment76: Do I have any pets? Not currently but I want some77: What is my current desktop picture? A picture I took of the lake like 500 years ago when we used to go camping78: Early bird or night owl? Night owl79: Sunsets or sunrise? Sunset80: Can I drive? Yes81: Story behind my last kiss? Uh I don’t remember his name whoops 82: Earphones or headphones? Earphones83: Have I ever had braces? Yes84: Story behind one of my scars? Knee surgery in 8th grade after a motorcycle accident 85: Favourite genre of music? Rock86: Who is my hero? No idea87: Favourite comic book character? Iron man maybe?88: What makes me really angry? My mother usually. When people are intolerant of others89: Kindle or real book? Either, tbh90: Favourite sporty activity? None lmao unless you count marching band??91: What is one thing that isn’t tight in schools that should be? Male dress code pls92: What was my favourite subject at school? Science and English 93: Siblings? An older brother94: What was the last thing I bought? Uhhhh food for myself95: How tall am I? 5'9 ish96: Can I cook? I try 97: Can I bake? I try this also lol98: 3 things I love? Kittens, puppies, good food99: 3 things I hate? Crowds, confrontations, people being angry at me100: Do I have more girl friends or boy friends? Girl101: Who do I get on with better, girls or boys? Girls I guess?102: Where was I born? Oklahoma103: Sexual orientation? Bisexual104: Where do I currently live? Oklahoma105: Last person I texted? My coworker, asking her to work for me this weekend for my birthday 106: Last time I cried? A few days ago 107: Guilty pleasure? Rewatching black butler, cough cough108: Favourite Youtuber? The guys at Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter109: A photo of myself. Look a few posts down from this one110: Do I like selfies? I love selfies!!!111: Favourite game app? Crossy road112: My relationship with my parents? Good so far113: Favourite accents? British and Scottish 114: A place I have not been but wish to visit? Ireland or Norway115: Favourite number? 5116: Can I juggle? Nope117: Am I religious? Nope118: Do I like space? Like… outer space or personal space? Because the answer is yes119: Do I like the deep ocean? It scares me120: Am I much of a daredevil? Not at all. I can be sometimes 121: Am I allergic to anything? Cats122: Can I curl my tongue? Yes123: Can I wiggle my ears? Yes 124: Do I like clowns? NO125: The Beatles or Elvis? Fuck. Uh. The Beatles. 126: My current project? ??? Trying to get up in the morning127: Am I a bad loser? Not usually, if I lost fairly128: Do I admit when I wrong? Always129: Forest or beach? Forest130: Favourite piece of advice? –131: Am I a good liar? Sometimes132: Hogwarts house / Divergent faction / Hunger Games district? Hufflepuff / dunno / dunno133: Do I talk to myself? More than is probably healthy134: Am I very social? Not at all135: Do I like gossip? No but it likes me136: Do I keep a journal/diary? No137: Have I ever hopelessly failed a test? Definitely138: Do I believe in second chances? Yes139: If I found a wallet full of cash on the ground, what would I do? Look to see if there was a license or some type of identification and return it 140: Do I believe people are capable of change? Yes141: Have I ever been underweight? Lmao no142: Am I ticklish? YES143: Have I ever been in a submarine? Technically yes? But it wasn’t underwater144: Have I ever been on a plane? Yes145: In a film about my life, who would I cast as myself, friends and family? Fuck this question 146: Have I ever been overweight? Yes147: Do I have any piercings? My nose148: Which fictional character do I wish was real? Um. Captain America. We need him right now149: Do I have any tattoos? I will have some soon150: What is the best decision I have made in life so far? Going into the medical field151: Do I believe in Karma? No??? Sometimes??? I dunno152: Do I wear glasses or contacts? Glasses153: What was my first car? A two door silver dodge stratus154: Do I want children? Right now no155: Who is the most intelligent person I know? Dunno156: My most embarrassing memory? Fuck there are so many. One day when I was really young my parents asked my choir director and his wife over to dinner (they were family friends) and my pants fell down in front of them157: What makes me nostalgic? Old pictures or music that I used to listen to (Story of the Year mostly)158: Have I ever pulled an all-nighter? All the time 159: Which do I value more in others, brains or beauty? Brains, but that doesn’t mean beauty isn’t nice to look at too160: What colour mostly dominates my wardrobe? Black lmao but I’m working on it161: Have I ever had a paranormal experience? Yes?? Kind of162: What do I hate most about myself? Everything163: What do I love most about myself? Not much164: Do I like adventure? … I want to say yes but at the same time I really like structure, so, I dunno. Once in a while?165: Do I believe in fate? No166: Favourite animal? I answered this one167: Have I ever been on radio? Nope168: Have I ever been on TV? Yes169: How old am I? 22, will be 23 in two more days!!170: One of my favourite quotes? “Remember who you are.” Don’t judge me. 171: Do I hold grudges? I try not to but I definitely do172: Do I trust easily? Too easily 173: Have I learnt from my mistakes? Some of them174: Best gift I’ve ever received? Can’t think of it right now175: Do I dream? Almost every night176: Have I ever had a night terror? Yes, when I was younger 177: Do I remember my dreams, and what is one that comes to mind? Sometimes I do, and one I remember recently was me marrying Leonardo DiCaprio. He bought me an island and we were having our honeymoon on his yacht on the way to the island but I woke up before we got there :c178: An experience that has made me stronger? ?????179: If I were immortal, what would I do? Travel180: Do I like shopping? I’m starting to. Usually no, I have to be in the right mood181: If I could get away with a crime, what would I choose to do? Maybe steal money? But I’m talking like, Robin Hood style here. I’d steal from the super rich and give it to the homeless people living a few streets down from me182: What does “family” mean to me? Anyone I love and trust unconditionally183: What is my spirit animal? I took one of those quizzes on Facebook years ago and it said I was a dog which is also my Chinese zodiac so???184: How do I want to be remembered? As a nice person185: If I could master one skill, what would I choose? Another language or playing a complicated instrument like the harp or something186: What is my greatest failure? My life lmao187: What is my greatest achievement? Graduating nursing school188: Love or money? Love, but if a sugar daddy comes my way and wants me to spend his money for him better be damn sure imma jump on that189: Love or career? Ughhhh I hate this. I’ve never been in love with someone so I can’t really say. 190: If I could time travel, where and when would I want to go? Everywhere. Literally like I’d go to every time period191: What makes me the happiest? Sleeping192: What is “home” to me? Somewhere I come to after a long day that I can call “mine.”193: What motivates me? ???? Dunno194: If I could choose my last words, what would they be? Ndksnsksndlx195: Would I ever want to encounter aliens? POSSIBLY??? Either they kill me or it all goes swimmingly either way it’s a win196: A movie that scared me as a child? E.T. funnily enough197: Something I hated as a child that I like now? Coffee198: Zombies or vampires? Vampires199: Live in the city or suburbs? Suburbs200: Dragons or wizards? Dragons201: A nightmare that has stayed with me? When I was little I dreamed there was a monster under the driver’s seat in my moms car and it was pink and veiny and scary and it ate my dad so202: How do I define love? Someone I trust unconditionally 203: Do I judge a book by its cover? I try not to but I definitely do204: Have I ever had my heart broken? Not really205: Do I like my handwriting? Not at all206: Sweet or savoury? Mmm depends on my mood. 207: Worst job I’ve had? Working at a nursing home. I lasted three days lmao208: Do I collect anything? I used to collect Pokémon cards209: Item of clothing or jewellery you’ll never see me without? A necklace unless I’m in scrubs210: What is on my bucket list? Skydiving, visiting certain places 211: How do I handle anger? Usually privately unless i can do something about it, then I’ll confront the person and try to work it out 212: Was I named after anyone? I share a middle name with my aunt 213: Do I use sarcasm a lot? No, neverrrr. I would NEVER do that…214: What TV character am I most like? No idea 215: What is the weirdest talent I have? Flaring my nostrils or crossing my eyes/moving them independently… or bending my fingers in weird ways??216: Favourite fictional character? I have many lol

#long post #answer

1 note · View note

networkingdefinition · 4 years

Text

Online Quotes

Official Website: Online Quotes

<span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start"> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push();

• A little tantrum in real life seems so much bigger online. – Joanne Harris • A lot of negative words adults call the young, like ‘naive,’ ‘impulsive’ and ‘way too connected online,’ are all things we can turn into strengths to help us. – Adora Svitak • A lot of people are living their lives online in much more public ways with Facebook and Twitter. – Dan Savage • A sense of that kind of narrative movement that we experience online could have been in my mind easily, though not consciously. I do rely so much on my unconscious, the way I write my stuff the way I do. I let my unconscious work. I have better ideas that way and more interesting work. – Jennifer Egan • A smartphone links patients’ bodies and doctors’ computers, which in turn are connected to the Internet, which in turn is connected to any smartphone anywhere. The new devices could put the management of an individual’s internal organs in the hands of every hacker, online scammer, and digital vandal on Earth. – Charles C. Mann • An awful lot of successful technology companies ended up being in a slightly different market than they started out in. Microsoft started with programming tools, but came out with an operating system. Oracle started doing contracts for the CIA. AOL started out as an online video gaming network. – Marc Andreessen • An online job search seems cheaper. But what HR is doing is turning away valuable candidates. They’re experiencing false negatives. That means the right person applies for the job electronically but the algorithm kicks them out so they lose that individual. – Nick Corcodilos • Angry Birds is one of the fastest-growing online products I’ve seen, growing even faster than Skype, and the company has done a brilliant job of extending it across different platforms and merchandise. – Niklas Zennstrom • Any online gamblers here? Well, Congress is looking in shutting that down.There’s going to be a massive congressional investigation of online gambling and they’re going to shut it down. And when they get done with that, they’re going to look into this North Korean thing. – David Letterman • Anything I really want I can find online. – Rachel Maddow • As each generation comes up that doesn’t have the habits for paper it’s just easier and cheaper to get your stuff online. You know, people go to what they’re used to. Certainly our generation, you know, we’ll always want to have a magazine in our hands. We like that, but millennials didn’t see the value in that necessarily. – John Buffalo Mailer • As far as what people think of me, maybe my stuff should just be put online for free downloads when I’m gone. – Henry Rollins • As Members of Congress we can now engage with our constituents via online innovations like the Huffington Post, while a small business in rural Oregon can use the Internet to find customers around the world. – Ron Wyden • As there are more online archives of improvised music, it becomes more like the daily practice of playing it. It lessens the idea of there being masterpieces of improvised music through benchmark recordings. – David Grubbs

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Online', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_online').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_online img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Back in the day, fans wrote letters to groups – you’d get them, although it could take a while. Now, artists can go online and there’s discussions about what you should and shouldn’t be doing. The minute you announce that you’re recording an album, thousands of people are telling you what that album should be. – Geddy Lee • Basically, my socialization as a child didn’t come from any schooling; it came from being in theater and meeting people online. – Felicia Day • Because there’s no accountability on line in the same way there is in real life, all of a sudden you can say like, yeah, I hate women; I want to kill women. And you can say that online, and not only will you find a place to say it, but you’ll find a place to say it where people are like, yeah, me too. – Jessica Valenti • Blood City III: The Massacre. I’d read the summary of it online, and frankly, it sounded like the directors had just decided to film my life. – James Patterson • Books are just dead words on paper and it is the readers who bring the stories alive. Previously, writers wrote a book and sent it out into the world. A couple of months after publication letters from readers might arrive. And, leaving aside the professional reviews, it is really the reader’s opinions that the writer needs. They vote for a book – and a writer – with their hard earned cash every time they go into a bookstore (or online – that’s my age showing!) and buy a book. – Michael Scott

[clickbank-storefront-bestselling] • Calling China’s online censorship system a ‘Great Firewall’ is increasingly trendy, but misleading. All walls, being the creation of engineers, can be breached with the right tools. – Evgeny Morozov • Chess: It’s like alcohol. It’s a drug. I have to control it, or it could overwhelm me. I have a regular Monday night game at my home, and I do play a little online. – Charles Krauthammer • Collections are certainly abundant online. It’s complicated, because it’s not like these people didn’t want computers, although there was some nonchalance about it. I would sometimes ask the people I interviewed if they wished they had a computer, and in a lot of cases, it was like they couldn’t process the question. You don’t know what you don’t have, I guess. – Miranda July • Communicating online goes back to the Defense Department’s Arpanet which started in 1969. There was something called Usenet that started in 1980, and this gave people an opportunity to talk about things that people on these more official networks didn’t talk about. – Howard Rheingold • Do you guys remember that woman who disappeared a few years ago, Chandra Levy? Do you remember her? I found this fascinating. Apparently, the day she disappeared, she had gone on her computer, and the last website she ever visited was an online map of the park where her body was found. That’s true. I just hope that if I ever disappear, people don’t look for me based on the last websites I visited. – Christian Finnegan • Don’t fool yourself that you’re blogging when you’re really just putting stuff up online. – Andrew Sullivan • Every generation has a changing of the guard in media. We do the same stuff that everybody else does, but we just do it differently. We do our content online differently. We do our magazines differently. We do our TV differently. We never had anyone tell us how to do magazines, so we just developed it in a different way. – Shane Smith • Every three weeks, we bring online as much solar power as we did in all of 2008…That’s why, over the past six years, we’ve done more than ever before to combat climate change, from the way we produce energy, to the way we use it. – Barack Obama • Everyone is looking for a purpose in life. The reason we all go to the cinema, or online, is because we haven’t found a purpose yet. We are always wondering why we’re here. But I’ve learned that we have to create that purpose for ourselves. My purpose, which I finally found thanks to social media, is helping all of these people find their purpose. – Jerome Jarre • Everyone told me, “Don’t ever talk about international stuff,” and “Don’t do long-form content online,” and “Don’t get too serious in news,” and “Don’t be too heavy” – all this stuff, all the rules. But we broke the rules, and that, ironically, has led to some of our most successful stuff. – Shane Smith • Fans decide what pop culture is. We can define ourselves. Music and the presentation of art nowadays is totally in our control, with the Internet specifically. You no longer need record labels. You no longer need movie distribution companies. You can just make it and put it online, and it will distribute itself to millions of people. The borders and everything have been broken down. It really is in the hands of the people. – Laura Jane Grace • Finding information is either a software question or a question of how much information is online. – Bill Gates • For me the core principles of privacy online are transparency, choice and control. – Marissa Mayer • Going online and asking questions is the best way to learn. – Tom Felton • Having an avatar doesn’t give you an identity, and having a persona online doesn’t make you a personality either. – Marilyn Manson • Here’s a habit I never thought I’d develop: I gravitate to anything online that’s marked ‘most popular’ or ‘most e-mailed.’ And I hate myself a little bit every time I do. – Susan Orlean • I always say that the real success of Wine Library wasn’t due to the videos I posted, but to the hours I spent talking to people online afterward, making connections and building relationships. – Gary Vaynerchuk • I always thought that digital first was a simplistic notion, and I am not even sure quite what it means. It should be stories first. Let’s take the Paris story: the New York Times covered it all day, we held nothing back. Everything we learned, we published online. Then, when you approach your print deadline, you have to do two things. You have to polish those stories that are online because print is less forgiving of mistakes. Secondly, in an ideal world, you pick one thing that will feel fresh and compelling to people in the morning when they pick up the print paper. – Dean Baquet • I am alone a lot, which is good. I need that time to just be alone after a long day, just decompress. So, I go to either my house or the hotel, or my apartment, or whatever – wherever I am, I go home and I watch TV and I sit there, with my cat, and I just watch TV or go online, check my emails. – Taylor Swift • I bet he never goes on YouTube. He’s too busy. It’s only tragic cases like you and me who are always online. – Sophie Kinsella • I binge write. I think it’s because I started seriously writing by participating in National Novel Writing Month, an online-based challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days. – Erin Morgenstern • I did skit comedy online for many years, beginning around 2001. Around 2006 I started watching a lot of food television and got re-interested in food. I come from a very food-obsessed family. But I also wanted to do my own thing, which was the comedy. – Nadia Giosia • I dislike the phrase ‘Internet friends,’ because it implies that people you know online aren’t really your friends, that somehow the friendship is less real or meaningful to you because it happens through Skype or text messages. The measure of a friendship is not its physicality but its significance. – John Green • I do find some of the meanest, most exclusionary people are the nerds. And they rebel against other nerds! What are you doing? As much as I love nerds and the nerd movement, the nerd-on-nerd violence is really bad. A lot of times, nerds are the meanest ones online. And also, the trolling can be very extensive because they’re smart. – Chris Hardwick • I do shop online! But I’m shopping online mostly in the home categories – One Kings Lane and Gilt. At a lot of architectural websites, I buy a lot of hardware for cabinetry like hinges and things like that from England. So you know for me, I shop at Net-A-Porter, but I don’t really shop that much for clothing online. – Nate Berkus • I don’t follow anything online. I am rather slow on that side. – Christian Louboutin • I don’t know of any source for online maps showing the platform, stairs, escalators, elevators, mezzanines and other station details. – Robert James Thomson • I don’t play online games. ‘Warcraft,’ I’ve played that, but I mainly play action games. – Steven Spielberg • I don’t see the point of having 80 million people online if all they are doing in the end is talking to ghosts in the suburbs. – Umberto Eco • I don’t spend a lot of time online. My mother’s really good at picking out if she sees a really great review, and she’ll forward it to me. She’s like my little Internet filter. It’s always nice to see something going up; if I want to find something on Nathan Fillion, I do know where to look, but I’ve got a nice little delivery system in my mom. – Nathan Fillion • I don’t think a true company – one that builds sustainable value – can ever only exist online or remotely. – Margaret Heffernan • I don’t think there’s a… boundary between digital media and print media. Every magazine is doing an online version. – Bill Gates • I don’t think they’re more temperamental people now. With social media we hear a lot more about it. The nastiness you get online, there were always mean girls – always – they didn’t have such a big forum as they do now. Mean girls ought to get a life, I think. – Jacki Weaver • I don’t want to get too involved in marketing budgets, online promotions and download set-ups because it would be a bit like Gertrude Stein mapping out a TV campaign. I want to sing. I want visibility. I am essentially Al Martino, not Seymour Stein. – Steven Morrissey • I feel like my perception has changed a little because when I was posting stuff online it was an extension of my studio and then it started getting some of the attention. Now it’s like, “Oh, this is actually a place where you can make money,” but I’m not interested in competing in that space. It seems like too much to deal with. – Kalup Linzy • I find myself using music metaphors all the time, but this is too perfect, I feel like. Digital downloading is like photographs online. It’s great, they’re available, you can see lots of different work, but it’s a limited experience of the form. A book is like an album. You don’t have to have a million dollars to be able to buy it, you have to save some money, you have to buy your album, then you take it home, and you put it on your turntable. – Alec Soth • I found that being online has opened a window for me to look into other people’s lives… The greatest fear that I have is losing touch. – Queen Rania of Jordan • I hate online bullying. Those little comment boxes can brim with the most vicious, acidic, and pointless remarks. – Alexa Chung • I have a book coming out in September, for example, where the plot concerns counterfeiting, and I had to do a lot of research on that. Or on any legal matters, for example, I have to do a lot of research online. – Ed McBain • I have a little obsessive-compulsive personality. You can tell because I played online games for eight hours a day. – Felicia Day • I have always kept my personal relationships pretty private, whether it’s intimate or my family or friends – at least in videos. It’s always been something that I’ve sworn off from sharing online. – Tyler Oakley • I have given money to the Obama campaign online and now they bombard me with emails every day. Why did I do that online? Why didn’t I just walk into an office? – Anne Heche • I joined Facebook purely so I could play online Scrabble. You have eight tiles instead of seven, so you tend to have higher scores. I’m somewhere between 400 and 500. – Moby • I know there’s an online petition to have another referendum [like Brexit] but I think honestly I think if people want to go for it a little further down the line it would be a hiding for nothing. – Nigel Farage • I like BuzzFeed, and I understand the pressure that online reporters are under. But I think everyone agrees that, despite all the awesome kitten gifs, they’re still obligated to be skeptical of government officials and ask the right questions. – Michael Moore • I like to shop. That’s what I do. Online shopping; any kind of shopping. – Sloane Stephens • I listened more than I asked. There’s a lot of information online, so many Youtube videos, countless interviews with all those obvious questions that were all answered for me. I just wanted to absorb her essence. I wanted to see the details, she has such mad style. I just wanted to see – the way she communicates with her hands, these gestures, her smile, how she moves through space. – Vera Farmiga • I live, I shop almost exclusively on the Internet. I’ve bought cars on the Internet. I watch television, I do everything on it. I even watch my son online. – Tom Ford • I love knowing and learning about people around the world displaying my art online. Also, it’s how I learn about new artists that are in various parts of the world. The positive thing about Tumblr and Instagram is that they’re a fantastic platform for art lovers. I also like, when I search for my art and it says, “see also or related artists,” and I see those other artists that relate to me, at least according to the internet. I think it’s fascinating – it’s interesting to see hashtags people are using in relation to my work. It’s another tool of communication. – Mickalene Thomas • I love teaching online at my website and soon I’ll be writing a math book. I love to teach math. I just don’t have time for a full-time teaching gig. Acting is way too time-consuming. – Danica McKellar • I often find things at thrift stores and library sales that I never could have been looking for. In those cases, the research is done after the fact to figure out what, exactly, I’ve found. It’s surprising how much out there still has no online presence. – Michael Dumontier • I posted a video a day for almost two months and was hardly sleeping, but I think it really pushed me to give music everything I had in me. I knew it was a chance I couldn’t miss. The funny thing is I never saw my music video when it aired during the Super Bowl because as soon as I heard my song start I was in tears for the next 10 minutes! The most amazing thing that came out of all of this, however, was the support that had developed online. Without the people that came back day after day to vote for me, I’d be nowhere, and I really owe it all to them. – Kina Grannis • I read every fan forum and every blog, and every message board, and every chat room. I read it all. There’s nothing online that I’m not aware of. – Joe Budden • I read everything I could find: books and online. Sometimes bigger revelations came to me through finer details or something that you wouldn’t pick up just by surface reading. – Abbie Cornish • I remember a day and time when the streets indicated what was hot online, and now I think it’s starting to reverse a little bit. – Joe Budden • I saw it on the Twitter of today, on the online boards. There was a huge amount of negative reaction that’s been forgotten because the quality eventually shined through. But usually it takes people a while to see what they’ve got on their plate. And I think, with “Jessica Jones,” it’s this anomalous thing where, and because of the original property being so good, people saw it right away, which is very unusual. – Jane Espenson • I spoke to a blogger. It was election time when we were doing the movie and Hillary Clinton was still in the running. This blogger was doing a story on democratic women who were anti-Hillary. He was on the computer speaking to these women and it made me realize that you can reach a much broader audience online but on the other hand Russell’s [Crowe] character argues that you still need to get on the streets and see people face to face, and check your facts. – Rachel McAdams • I started moving into online work, and that exposed me to design and the impact it has on the flow, shape, and narrative of the story. This got me thinking that maybe this is a way of doing journalism, a way of telling stories and revealing patterns. – David Mccandless • I think anything we do – eating, walking down the street, online shopping – gives you another perspective on writing stories. – Peter Orner • I think in the end, anger and negativity from other people is all about what’s going on inside them. So I don’t really mind it. There’s a lot of it online, there’s a load of it on the roads, but I just plow on regardless. – Jeremy Vine • I think it is effective when activists work from the margins, and I think that’s the best way to go about it. And I do think that it’s increasingly being more effective with the work that’s being done online, that it is a bit more democratized, that whatever kind of activism is being done, it’s not necessarily coming from one centralized place. – Jessica Valenti • I think it’s both annoying and beneficial that there’s so much freedom online. – Rachel Maddow • I think that online harassment has become so ubiquitous on the Internet that a lot of women do feel safer, whatever that means, in spaces where they know like people are not going to bother them in that kind of way. – Jessica Valenti • I think the way design was practiced for most of the 20th century was very declarative. A designer came up with a solution for a project and put it in place and shipped the solution and it landed in a reader or a customer’s hands as a brochure. They would see it as a poster, or as a piece of signage. And that was sort of it. That was the end of it. I think Internet technology has really upended that whole equation because in some ways a designer’s work is never really done online. – Khoi Vinh • I think, it’s so difficult to create a buzz anywhere, whether it be online, the streets, radio, anywhere, that if you are able to create a buzz somewhere, it definitely means something. – Joe Budden • I used to go online all the time, and then I had to stop myself… because I’m a writer, and it’s like: to have a procrastination tool, like, within my computer… it was just getting too hairy. – Mike White • I used to work for an NGO called Transitions Online, and I was their Director of New Media. I was a very idealistic fellow who thought that he could use blogs, social networks and new media to help promote democracy, human rights and freedom of expression. – Evgeny Morozov • I want to make sure (a user) can’t get through … an online experience without hitting a Microsoft ad. – Steve Ballmer • I wanted to make sure that this be the first scientific and technology revolution in history in which the public thoroughly discussed all the potential benefits and all the potential harms, in advance of the technology coming online and running its course. – Jeremy Rifkin • I was single for a really long time, then I realized I had abandonment issues. Then I found love online. – Patti Stanger • I waste a lot of my time documenting my “search for great esoterica” online. It gets so complicated trying to identify or give credit to all of one’s influences. – Michael Dumontier • I went online with winelibrary.com in July of 1997; that was my first professional online play. – Gary Vaynerchuk • I wouldn’t say you have an online life and a real life. I think technology is just mapping and organizing what already exists. – Ashton Kutcher • I`ve been spending a fair amount of time in the recesses of white nationalist, white supremacist social media online areas, what called itself is the “alt right”, which is sort of the euphemistic term they use for what is essentially modern day white supremacy. And they are some of [Donald]Trump – this has been reported from the beginning but they are very excited about [anti-Muslim] proposal. – Chris Hayes • If you get a chance, whenever you’re traveling, do go to the local boutique comic book shop and don’t buy your comics online ’cause those guys are going to go extinct, in a minute here, and we want to be able to have those experiences with our kids. – Nicolas Cage • If you take a strong stance and have a clear opinion or statement on any subject online, you’re going to polarize people. And without that polarity, there’s no discussion. Discussion is what I want, which means that I’m fine with the consequences. – Tim Ferriss • I’m astonished at how readily a great many people I know, young people, have accepted a reduced economic prospect and limited freedoms in any substantial sense, and basically traded them for being able to screw around online. – Jaron Lanier • I’m fond of online testimonials: people writing about their experiences with ghosts or drugs or bad boyfriends. – Michael Dumontier • I’m going to go do this crazy thing. I’m going to start this company selling books online. – Jeff Bezos • I’m not an anti-online person. I get what the modern world’s about and I understand that that’s the nature of music dissemination. – Tim Hecker • I’m not big on awareness about what’s going on online but usually if you do too much online stuff then you usually bump into something that hurts. – Alice Eve • I’m not big on to-do lists. Instead, I use e-mail and desktop folders and my online calendar. So when I walk up to my desk, I can focus on the e-mails I’ve flagged and check the folders that are monitoring particular projects and particular blogs. – Bill Gates • I’m working on a mixtape called I Made Hip-Hop Smile. It’s going to be a free online mixtape. I think it’s going to get some crazy buzz. We have a few marketing campaigns, that I think are going to make it pull through. – SonReal • In 1998, Artnet was the site that convinced me that if my writing didn’t exist online, it didn’t exist at all. It showed me criticism’s future. – Jerry Saltz • In marriage we have a duty to God, our spuses, the world, and future generations. But we are sinners. A husband and wife need to acknowledge that when the Bible speaks of fools, it is not just speaking about other people, but about them as well. Even the wisest among us has moments of folly. So God gives us spouses to serve as wise friends by praying with and for us, attending church with us, speaking truth, and providing Scripture along with good books and online classes, lectures, and sermons to nourish fruitfulness in our lives. – Mark Driscoll • In the old generation, if one kid bought a PlayStation 2 and the other kid bought an Xbox, at his house you played PlayStation, at your house you played Xbox. Now that it’s online, all those early buyers who… you want to play with, they’ve got their reputation online of who they are and how good they are at these games. – Bill Gates • In this age of omniconnectedness, words like ‘network,’ ‘community’ and even ‘friends’ no longer mean what they used to. Networks don’t exist on LinkedIn. A community is not something that happens on a blog or on Twitter. And a friend is more than someone whose online status you check. – Simon Sinek • In this age of Twitter and Snark every misstep gets posted online in twelve seconds. – Howard Kurtz • It is nonsense that people shopping online in some parts of Europe are unable to access the best deals because of where they live. I want completing the single market to be our driving mission. – David Cameron • It is piracy, not overt online music stores, which is our main competitor. – Steve Jobs • It was really bizarre for me to go from being a very private and obscure person and then to be in any way on the internet – like having my picture or videos online. – Erika M. Anderson • It’s everywhere, constant criticism of women’s appearance in magazines and online. It’s not easy to navigate. – Shirley Manson • It’s fun when the writers start writing jokes to you, but also it’s fun when the writers will come to you and say ‘Hey, listen, we’re working on this story and we need to know if you speak any foreign languages.’ And I said ‘No, I don’t. I speak a little Spanish, but I can learn a foreign language.’ And they go ‘Okay, do you think you can learn Portuguese?’ And I go ‘Yeah, whatever it takes. If it’s funny, I’ll do it.’ So of course I start looking online and learning Portuguese, and as it turns out, I get the script and it’s now Serbian. – David Alan Basche • It’s important to distinguish between “worry versus harm” when it came to privacy online. – Larry Page • It’s so different now coming out as a new artist today than it was when I came out almost ten years ago. Now, it’s all about singles, it’s really quick, it’s online. I came out when people sold records and they still do today but – I don’t know what the key is. – Avril Lavigne • It’s time to update traditional public schools, charter schools, home schools, online schools and parochial schools. Let the dollars follow the child instead of forcing the child to follow the dollars, so that every child has the opportunity to attain an education. – Bobby Jindal • It’s very important to have a good song – one where you can strip away all the production and just play it on guitar or at the piano. It has to hold its own. That’s why I’ve put videos online with acoustic versions of my songs, so you can hear them in their original form. – Lights • It’s very much a back and forth conversation between the fans and the writers, between the writers and the powers that be. Their opinions, especially when expressed online or via correspondence, are important and are taken into consideration. – Wentworth Miller • I’ve also worked with various producers and artists around the world, which has helped with my international recognition. We’ve sold a lot of albums online in places like Norway and France. Sometimes we track my hits online daily and we are getting regular hits from people all over the place. – SonReal • I’ve gotten so far past the Android and iPhones that I’m back to a flip-phone. It’s funny, you can buy antique flip-phones online. A lot of us collect them. Clearly, they’re considered antiques. – Tim Allen • I’ve made choices in my life to be somewhat broke to do art and I think it is going to be the same thing with online exposure. You have to be able to make the choices that can make you happy or it will make you crazy. – Erika M. Anderson • I’ve spent a lot of time in tiny venues in the way that I got my record deal and got my name out there just performing live. I was literally performing my songs in all kinds of different ways with different guitarists, and I didn’t have an album up online or anything. It’s been a lot of work; it definitely hasn’t been a sudden explosion into fame. – Florence Welch • I’ve started researching online journals for the project. Thanks for decoding Dr. Heller’s notes before sending them to me. If you’d have forwarded them to me without a translation, I’d be searching for a tall building/overpass/water tower from which to yell “goodbye cruel world. – Tammara Webber • Just as TurboTax simplified much of the tax process, so has the colossally scary legal process been reduced to a kinder, gentler series of mouse clicks and ‘Continue’ buttons by LegalZoom, the online leader that has become so prominent in its market that it’s practically a generic. – Lynda Resnick • Keep an eye on what your kids are seeing online. Parents need to stay involved in what their children are being exposed to. It’s so important. – Danica McKellar • Kenny Goldsmith from Ubuweb describes himself as an amateur archivist, and people can download files from Ubuweb – it’s not a streaming service. But it’s a miracle that it’s still online and they’re able to make it work through the donations of server space and volunteer efforts. – David Grubbs • Let me finish my music, and let me present it the way I want to present it. And then share it, put it online, do whatever you want to do after that. – Talib Kweli • Look, I don’t have a Facebook page because I have little interest in hearing myself talk about myself any further than I already do in interviews or putting any more about myself online than there already is. But if I wasn’t in this position, I’m sure I would use it every day. – Jesse Eisenberg • Luckily, there’s enough people who have recorded songs that I can just go online and kind of figure out how to play them. – Regina Spektor • Luxury is not a static concept, but it shapes and changes with society. Now somebody who might not have the time to come to one of our boutiques can shop online. – Stefano Gabbana • Make your initial contact short and sweet. Five sentences or less, or under 150 words. If someone instant messages you while you’re online, go ahead and IM them back if you want. Otherwise, wait twenty-two to twenty-three hours between email contacts for the first few messages. Don’t send messages while most people are sleeping, even if you’re wide-awake. Shoot for business hours or just after dinnertime. – Amy Webb • Massive numbers of people are going to come online from cultures we don’t normally interact with. – Jimmy Wales • Microsoft loves losing money with online services, so this should stay free forever… unless they get a new CEO who isn’t crazy about pouring billions into a hole. – Marco Arment • Military commanders do not want to be tried for war crimes, even if those crimes are committed online. – Evgeny Morozov • More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services – from movies to agriculture to national defense. – Marc Andreessen • More and more major industries are being run on software and delivered as online services—from movies to agriculture to national defense. Many of the winners are Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial technology companies that are invading and overturning established industry structures. Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software, with new world-beating Silicon Valley companies doing the disruption in more cases than not. – Marc Andreessen • More platform-sensitive generations will make distinctions between online and in-person intimacy, whereas fourteen-year-olds have very nuanced online selves and might embody their virtual identity in the physical, analogue version of themselves. They have a much more pluralistic understanding of the self. I don’t think we’d be here now in this amazing sexual and gender revolution without the online space where young people can see and share other versions of identity and sexuality. – Charlotte Cotton • Most of the books, music and movies ever released are not available for sale, anywhere in the world. In the brief time that P2P nets have flourished, the ad-hoc masses of the Internet have managed to put just about *everything* online. What’s more, they’ve done it far cheaper than any other archiving/revival effort ever. – Cory Doctorow • Mrs. Gautier, I hear there are places online where you can sell children for a good price. Nick is still young enough, he should fetch enough to tide you over for a bit.” – Rosa – Sherrilyn Kenyon • My goal is that we should have a rich engagement online that caters to a general and scholarly audience and that can provide a seamless experience for people, whether they are up the road or on the other side of the world. – Thomas P. Campbell • My hunch is that people often affiliate with causes online for selfish and narcissistic purposes. Sometimes, it may be as simple as trying to impress their online friends, and once you have fashioned that identity, there is very little reason to actually do anything else. – Evgeny Morozov • My laptop seems to know where I am, even if I don’t. My cellphone asks me if I want directions to anywhere from the spot I am standing in. I buy a record online and Amazon.com sends me letters, telling me that people who bought what I bought also bought these other records. – Henry Rollins • MySpace is somehow more welcoming than Facebook. And Twittering, I just… Ugh. I like having radio silence. I think radio silence is an important part of any public figure’s day. We haven’t seen it yet, but there’s going to be a generation that comes up where the new trend will be complete anonymity. It’ll be cool to have never posted anything online, commented, opened a webpage or a MySpace. I think everyone in the future is going to be allowed to be obscure for 15 minutes. You’ll have 15 minutes where no one is watching you, and then you’ll be shoved back onto your reality show. – Patton Oswalt • New content online no longer requires new stories or information, just new ways of linking things to other things. Or as the social networks might put it to you, ‘Jane is now friends with Tom.’ The connection has been made; the picture is getting more complete. – Douglas Rushkoff • New online formats gutted the newspaper-ad business. Why pore over tiny print looking for a job in the want ads when you can tap a few keywords into monster.com, then click through and apply? Why pay a steep per-character rate for a classified when you can hawk a whole garage full of used stuff on EBay or Craigslist for free? – Nathan Myhrvold • Newspapers are busily experimenting with different models. Traditionally, and I suspect in hindsight very mistakenly, online news was free. And once given free access readers felt it was their entitlement. – Malcolm Turnbull • Now everyone takes it for granted that you can look up movie reviews, track locations, and order stuff online. I wish there was a way we could take it away from people for a day so they could remember what it was like without it. – Bill Gates • Now, I’m as appreciative as the next obsessive-compulsive recovering-academic of the vast riches of material becoming available online, thanks to all those Google scanners crouched in the basements of libraries around the world, madly feeding books through their machines. I download obscure tomes onto my iPad and give thanks to the dual gods Gates and Jobs, singing hymns to all the lesser pantheon of geniuses. But there’s nothing like a book. – Laurie R. King • Oh, I think there are a lot of people who would be buying and selling online today that go up there and they get the information, but then when it comes time to type in their credit card they think twice because they’re not sure about how that might get out and what that might mean for them. – Bill Gates • Once I learned, I went online and ordered every romance novel I could find. They’re fairy tales for grown-ups. – Gena Showalter • One of the things I really like about doing work online, and the thing I like about the work I’m doing now, is that I get to meet feminists all the time and I get to read new feminists every day on the blogosphere. – Jessica Valenti • One of the unintended negative consequences of online advertising has been the loss of value in traditional classifieds. It’s simply quicker, simply easier for an end user who’s online, on a broadband connection, to look things up and to figure out what they want to buy. – Eric Schmidt • One thing we didn’t know in 1996 is that it’s very, very difficult, if not impossible, to sustain a culture with online advertising. – Howard Rheingold • Online advertising may not be much more successful than an old double-barrel, but – like a good spray of buckshot – it makes up for its lack of accuracy with sheer volume. There are 10 unique ads listed with every Gmail message in your queue, each tied to the message content. And a paying sponsor. – Douglas Rushkoff • Online communities are an expression of loneliness. – Joanne Harris • Online education is pretty special for two reasons. One is that you can get the very best lecture in the world and wherever you are, whenever you want, you can connect to that lecture. The other is this interactivity, where if you know a topic, you can kind of skip over it. Or if you’re confused about it, [the area] where you’re confused can be analyzed by software. – Bill Gates • Online gambling is very seductive and very illusory. It can seem like a really good idea. It can seem like what people told you to work hard and get ahead, but when someone shows you something and it’s too good to be true, it probably is. – Ben Affleck • Online hierarchies are inherently dynamic. The moment someone stops adding value to the community, his influence starts to wane. – Gary Hamel • Online I see people committing ‘social media suicide’ all the time by one of two ways. Firstly by responding to all criticism, meaning you’re never going to find time to complete important milestones of your own, and by responding to things that don’t warrant a response. This lends more credibility by driving traffic. – Tim Ferriss • Part of creating the future is to follow this consumer. Women are working; we’ve moved the store to the desk. Now though, she’s is in the back of a cab with her iPhone or her iPad, she’s tweeting an outfit that her friend is wearing and desperately trying to find out where she got her shoes online. – Natalie Massenet • Peak hours for sending a first email through the online dating system tended to be during work (eleven A.M. to four P.M.) and then just after dinner (seven P.M. to nine P.M.). I did have a few women send me a first message after eleven P.M. Those who did had an 82 percent chance of coming from a profile that had too many words. – Amy Webb • People are different in different situations and people are different online than they are in real life. – Joel Stein • Personalization can be very useful in some contexts but very harmful in others. Searching for pizza online, it’s probably OK to keep showing the same pizza shop as your No. 1 choice. I don’t see any big political consequences out of that. – Evgeny Morozov • Point me to 50 people online who think I’m super sexy. I’ll point you to 50 more who say he’s old and looks like my dad. – Jon Hamm • Popular women use positive, optimistic language in their online profiles, not buzzwords like “future thinker”. Here are the ten most often used words I found: easy-going, love, laugh, laid-back, optimistic, outgoing, fun, down-to-earth, pleasure, adventure. – Amy Webb • Recently I danced in a video spoof of the song ‘Gangnam Style,’ and it was quickly banned across multiple Chinese online video platforms. But the story still traveled all over the world, carried in hundreds of international media reports. – Ai Weiwei • Rhage burning deep inside Uncontrollable Phury, unable to hide Trust me and I’ll let my Wrath begin This Tohrment building up within My Vischous attitude will shine through ………I’ll let my Tehrror free on you -my own zsadist quote from the black dagger brotherhood that i found online – J.R. Ward • Russian young people spend countless hours online downloading videos and having a very nice digital entertainment lifestyle, which does not necessarily turn them into the next Che Guevara. – Evgeny Morozov • San Bernardino involved two killers were actually radicalized before they started courting or dating each other online, and online as late as – as early as the end of 2013, they were talking to each other about jihad and martyrdom before they became engaged and then married and lived together in the United States. – Keith Ellison • Shopping, eating, and being with my friends. So, anytime that I am at home chillin’, I will find a way to shop online. I’m like, “If I’m not allowed out of the house tonight then I am shopping online! – Miley Cyrus • Simply getting a country’s population online is not going to trigger a revolution in critical thinking. – Evgeny Morozov • Sleephackers go to bed with sensors on their wrists and foreheads and maintain detailed electronic sleep diaries, which they often share online. To shift between sleep phases, sleephackers experiment with various diets, room and body temperatures, and kinds of pre-sleep physical exercise. – Evgeny Morozov • Social media’s currency is the single photograph. Whereas, every time I look at a photograph, I look at twenty or thirty photographs. I’m looking for a narrative. And that’s a different kind of construct. If you’re a poet and you put a line from your poem online, “The trees bending over gracefully,” or something, you can get a tick. But that has nothing to do with your longer poem. – Stuart Franklin • Some people get the wrong idea, you know. If you’re quiet and you’re just not the most gregarious person, that you’re like.. I don’t know, self-involved, rude possibly, frigid. I get that a lot from people who don’t know me, like online all you guys think I never smile, ever. It’s not true. I do smile sometimes. – Kristen Stewart • Some people say that it’s so hard with the Internet, but I know for a fact that the Internet has made it easier for someone to establish themselves. There’s so much you can do online. If you know how to use it right, the web serves as the great equalizer for someone that’s just getting into business. – Jordan Belfort • Sometimes markets err big time. Markets erred when they gave America Online the currency to buy Time Warner. They erred when they bet against George Soros and for the British pound. And they are erring right now by continuing to float along as if the most significant credit bubble history has ever seen does not exist. Opportunities are rare, and large opportunities on which one can put nearly unlimited capital to work at tremendous potential returns are even more rare. Selectively shorting the most problematic mortgage-backed securities in history today amounts to just such an opportunity. – Michael Burry • Start-ups like UniversityNow, a network of low-cost, online colleges, allows students to work at their own pace and pay a few hundred dollars a month for a degree. – Dan Rather • Team Obama continues to dominate new media, spending far more effort and money than Team Romney in targeted online youth outreach. – Jennifer Granholm • Term Life Insurance is the only insurance I recommend. It’s the least expensive way to get the coverage your family needs and allows you to lock in rates for 15, 20 or 30 years. Zander’s online quoting system will help you find the most competitive options. It’s more affordable than you think! – Dave Ramsey • The [Hillary] Clinton campaign posted a pretty clever online quiz that makes a similar point with the Republican presidential field. Who said it? Donald Trump or not Donald Trump? For example, quote, “I mean you can prove you are a Christian. You can`t prove it, then you err on the side of caution.” That was not Donald Trump. It was this guy, who strongly denounced Trump`s proposed Muslim ban but supports a religious test for refugees. – Chris Hayes • The actual process of travel I really like, because that time on planes and in airports makes me feel like I’m moving around like a ghost. There’s a certain aspect of justifiable downtime. I really feel like being online is so pervasive now. – Johnny Marr • The audience might not be the size of Facebook, but how much time can you spend online and think, ‘What did I just learn? – Chris Hughes • The best remote companies I’ve seen do almost everything online, via email and telephone. But they also get together face to face on a regular basis. – Margaret Heffernan • The best thing about the world today is that everyone is connected and you can go online and quickly find people all over the world doing incredible things. – Benjamin Stone • The biggest thing is online shopping. So that you don’t have to dress up, go down Bond Street or Rodeo or wherever, go and be intimidated by shop assistants to buy Gucci shoes or a Prada dress. You can just go online and, if it doesn’t fit you, send it back. And I think that is the biggest, biggest difference, because that means everybody can do it. – Jennifer Saunders • The decentralized nature of online conversations often makes it easier to manipulate public opinion, both domestically and globally. Regimes that once relied on centralized systems of media control can now deliver ideological messages more subtly, with the help of little-known intermediaries like anonymous commenters on websites. – Evgeny Morozov • The director of the FBI has been visiting Silicon Valley companies asking them to build back doors so that it can spy on what is being said online. The Department of Commerce is going after piracy. At home, the American government wants anything but Internet freedom. – Evgeny Morozov • The easiest way to figure out who the customer is in an online space is to figure out who is paying for the thing. Usually, the people paying are the customers. So on Facebook, the people paying are marketers. That makes them the customers. And it means we are the product being delivered to those customers. – Douglas Rushkoff • The first thing I do every morning is go online to check the surf. If the waves are good, I’ll go surf. The beach is 10 minutes away. – Marisa Miller • The future of narrative? Built in, part of the human template. Not going away. The future of the codex book, with pages and so forth? A platform for transmitting narratives. There are others. The scroll is coming back (Twitter is a scroll.) Short forms are returning online. Interactivity is coming back; it was always there in oral storytelling. Each form has its pluses and its minuses. – Margaret Atwood • The grand prize was $10,000, then there was a people’s choice award where people could vote online. – Pamela Geller • The idea that a musician can submit music online for the chance to have it promoted to a nationwide audience is the American dream come true, and a major step toward democratizing how music is discovered. – Ali Partovi • The Internet … is an amazing communications tool that’s bringing the whole world together. I mean, you sit down to sign on to America Online in your hometown, and it’s just staggering to think that at the same moment, halfway around the world, in China, someone you’ve never met is sitting at their computer, hearing the exact same busy signal that you’re hearing. – Dennis Miller • The Internet has changed everything. People will be discovered online. People buy music online. It’s a completely different way to get entertainment. – Bette Midler • The internet has opened the door for millions of businesses to do things differently, because there are other assets now, assets that can transcend location. Your permission to talk to customers, your reputation, your unique products-you can build a business around them online. – Seth Godin • The Internet is the new public space. And because women are out in public, people don’t like that in much the same way that if you’re walking down the street you get harassed. I think the same kind of thing happens online, and I think that’s why a lot of women are hesitant to put their voice out there. – Jessica Valenti • The Mail Online is like carbs – you know you shouldn’t but you do. Probably two or three times a day. – Lily Allen • The Metropolitan Museum has all of our collections online, all our scholarly publications and catalogues since 1965. We have online features like the timeline of art history. – Thomas P. Campbell • The profitable part of the online business is very likely several years away. Entering the business because it’s the hot topic of the day doesn’t make a profitable business nor satisfied customers. That’s why it will be a part of Nintendo’s strategy, not the mainstay, as other companies are attempting to do. There still are too many barriers for any company to greatly depend on it. – Satoru Iwata • The recent arrest of Younis Tsouli in the United Kingdom was no doubt a significant victory in the war against online terrorism. Tsouli was one of a very select few individuals who have successfully used the Internet as a means to network and share resources with a host of Al-Qaida-linked terrorist organizations. – Evan Kohlmann • The Simpsons and Futurama are such big projects, going on for years and working in different media, that everything involved with them, promotion and merchandise and online presence and all the rest, deserve to be scrutinized, so that’s part of it. I have a great deal of sympathy for anyone at the core of a multimedia juggernaut, even if you might not care for the specific pop-culture invasion of your brain. The people who do it work really hard. – Matt Groening • The smartest thing I did was to stop going online. I’m the sort of person who will just look for the negative – Michael really can’t understand it, but that’s just the way I am. And with my bipolar thing, that’s poison. So I just stopped. Cold turkey. And it’s so liberating. – Catherine Zeta-Jones • The survey of more than 100 waterways downstream from treatment plants and animal feedlots in 30 states found minute amounts of dozens of antibiotics, hormones, pain relievers, cough suppressants, disinfectants and other products. It is not known whether they are harmful to plants, animals or people. The findings were released yesterday on the Web site of the United States Geological Survey, which conducted the research, and in an online journal, Environmental Science and Technology. – Andrew Revkin • The thing about online gambling is that it’s never away, it’s always accessible. And so, if you have an issue with gambling, it’s designed to take advantage of that. – Ben Affleck • The White House New Media team circulates multiple highlights each day of what people are looking for online – Twitter trending topics, popular Google searches, etc. – and it gives us a sense of what’s breaking through, what isn’t, and a sanity check for what the larger online population cares about at any given time. – Daniel Pfeiffer • The worst thing about the internet, as far as Greg’s bosses were concerned, was that it was now impossible to distinguish a roomful of people working diligently from a roomful of people taking the What-Kind-of-Dog-Am-I? online personality quiz – Rainbow Rowell • There are online forms you can fill out to send to your lawmakers, demanding that nothing – nothing at all or in any way – be done about any guns whatever, anywhere. – Dick Cavett • There is evil prowling in the world – it shows up in our movies, video games and online fascinations, and finds its way into vulnerable hearts and minds. – Rick Perry • There was a clown that tried to eat me as a boy, in my nightmares. Years later I found a clown for booking online who resembled him named Patches. Needless to say, Patches is dead now. – Thom Yorke • There will be a few people who will resent the fact you have to be online to play a single-player game. But it’ll change. – Tim Willits • There’s a lot of controversy online, some people say i’m a genius and other say i’m hugely talented. – Andy Kindler • There’s always a tricky issue when you get into stolen material or pornography. The laws for online publishing the same as for print-based publishing, where if you’re hosting certain types of things and somebody notifies you about that. – Bill Gates • There’s nothing that beats proving you’re funny by making a funny thing, and right now there are huge outlets for that, with You Tube and all the other stuff online. – Louis C. K. • There’s tons of junk food for your mind on the Internet. You can sit there for three or 10 or 20 hours a day getting in online arguments with other people who also choose to waste their time. – Henry Rollins • Things have a behavior online, whereas in print, there is a single canonical expression for them, but online everything responds to different criteria or has inherent states to it based on that criteria. So, you have to design that in a different way. It’s a completely different dynamic even though it may look similar. – Khoi Vinh • Today Monopoly added a new game piece: the cat. The new piece was chosen after weeks of online voting. Is that a surprise? Whenever there’s a vote for something on the Internet, the cat always wins. – Craig Ferguson • Virtual Reality is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures. – Mark Zuckerberg • Washington wants ObamaCare, the people want freedom. Washington wants amnesty, the people want rule of law. Washington wants power over the internet, the people want freedom online. – Ted Cruz • We [me and Jennifer Salke] talked about the characters and different kinds of families and where are we today. We certainly pitched the gay couple, but we also talked about what it was like to be a single mother with a young daughter, what is it like to be a woman in your 50’s who is completely starting over and dating again and having to go online to date again. We talked about the whole spectrum of the characters, but I don’t think it ever came up about whether people are ready for it or not. – Ryan T. Murphy • We all have a suspicion and hope that we’ve just been part of something special, something that may eventually change our lives. That no one else knows this makes it seem like we are living with a secret that we would like to share, but can’t, sort of like having a superpower that’s not come online or being president elect. For the moment, our lives proceed as usual, but within a month, we think, everything will change. It’s a frustrating, if exciting, disconnect. – Rob Lowe • We are living our lives more online and you need to have different ways to capture that. – Nate Silver • We disagree with the assertion that great teachers can be replaced by online alternatives. The futuristic claim that technology will triumph over teachers ignores all the social and relational dimensions of teaching and learning. – Andy Hargreaves • We in CNN have 27 reporters out in the field – from Alaska to Florida, and everywhere in between. 29 if you count the White House and the Hill. We are in every key state, in every key district and on the ground where key issues are playing out. Political campaigns’ success is all about the ground game and CNN feels the same way about election coverage. Expect to see original reporting from all our remote locations all night long. On air and online. – Andrew Morse • We need more filmmakers of color telling the story. I’d like to see more filmmakers take their products out independently, put together a good commercial film and distribute it online. – Will Packer • We need more transparency and accountability in government so that people know how their money is being spent. That means putting budgets online, putting legislation online. – Carly Fiorina • We need transparency in government spending. We need to put each government expenditure online so every Floridian can see where their tax money is being spent. – Marco Rubio • We seem to live in a world where forgetting and oblivion are an industry in themselves and very, very few people are remotely interested or aware of their own recent history, much less their neighbors’. I tend to think we are what we remember, what we know. The less we remember, the less we know about ourselves, the less we are. (Interview with Three Monkeys Online, October 2008) – Carlos Ruiz Zafon • We should differentiate between criminals who make violent threats online, and trolls who are just arseholes – Bonnie Greer • We went online to surrogacy agencies. We interviewed lots of people – and I have to say, with all due respect, some of them were freaks. I was very leery of the process the whole way through. – Christopher Meloni • We’re at a point in time in our history of humanity where the systems we use for mass production have to be reevaluated, and it first struck me that online communities are a way to have local production with a universal reach. – Mary Mattingly • What’s always struck me is how different the sensory, especially auditory, experience is when you’re in the middle of the music with the musicians playing off each other around you. I wanted to find a way to unlock the intensity of that, to recreate that unique perspective, first for the hundreds of people who attended the concert, and eventually for a much larger online audience. – Chris Milk • When I first started writing for television in the seventies and eighties, the Internet didn’t exist, and we didn’t need to worry about foreign websites illegally distributing the latest TV shows and blockbuster movies online. – Al Franken • When it became easy enough to do dairy online, then I just thought, “Oh, I’ll start doing this. I’ll put the parts online that aren’t going to get me in trouble. I’ll save the rest for myself.” It became also this kind of self-therapy. I could write about stuff that was bothering me, or personal stuff. And the very personal stuff I could edit out. But it was kind of the catharsis of getting it out and writing about it, that made me think, “Okay, I see why people do this, why they keep these diaries.” So I thought, “Well, let’s see what happens when I post some of it.” – David Byrne • When it comes to people who are saying really extreme things online, we have the tendency to think that they are just kooks, or that you shouldn’t pay attention to them, you shouldn’t take them seriously. – Jessica Valenti • When something online is free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product. – Jonathan Zittrain • When we started OD2 in 1999, we were really expecting to work more with independents and so on because the major labels were spending millions on their own Pressplay and equivalents online, which haven’t been very successful. – Peter Gabriel • When you think about email or IMing, why aren’t you writing back? I can see your avatar, I know you’re online, why aren’t you writing me back? But with Twitter, everybody sends their responses to Twitter, and Twitter then sends them out to everyone. So there’s not this constant connection. You can be hyperconnected, then you can take a break for a couple days and it’s fine. – Biz Stone • When you’re doing stuff online, you should behave as if you’re doing it in public – because increasingly, it is. – Jon Kleinberg • Who are the executives, and what are the stories that are being released? Not just in movie theaters but online. When you watch Master of None, you’re like, yes, this is real life to me. These are refreshing types of stories. – Daniel Radcliffe • Why the confidential advisor provision is so important, because most women – the first place they go is online: “What do I do if I’m raped?” There’s no knowledge about “How do I proceed?” in a way that’s going to protect them. – Kirsten Gillibrand • With any video you see online, like with YouTube, you gotta watch an ad, and that’s gotta stop. And I think it’ll stop by…the shitty network shows they put out will just have the ads in the shows. The characters will be eating Cheetos or whatever. – Derek Waters • With lower start-up costs and a vastly expanded market for online services, the result is a global economy that for the first time will be fully digitally wired – the dream of every cyber-visionary of the early 1990s, finally delivered, a full generation later – Marc Andreessen • With the development of the web everything is instantaneous. Everything is about how quick you can get it. So with online gambling you don’t have to travel to Vegas, Atlantic City, or anywhere in the world to gamble. – Brad Furman • Yes, e-commerce is a strange situation for an old guy like me. You can buy a TV online, OK, but to buy a dress or shoes? Ugh. The customer has to go back to the store and breathe and smell and have a good time. Because shopping is a good time – like going to a nice restaurant. – Max Azria • Yes. It is true. I, Michael Scott, am signing up with an online dating service. Thousands of people have done it, and I am going to do it. I need a username, and I have a great one. ‘Little Kid Lover.’ That way people will know exactly where my priorities are at. – Steve Carell • You buy a new iPhone, a few months later, another new iPhone comes out, and you get online to buy another one. You can’t get enough. You are addicted to Apple. – J. B. Smoove • You could spend every waking moment online and still only experience one-trillionth of what’s out there. I find that a little overwhelming. – Moby • You know, it’s not a given that there is an ‘online’ and ‘offline’ world out there. When you use the telephone, you don’t say that I’m entering some ‘telephono-sphere.’ You don’t say that, and there is no obvious need to say that when you are using a modem. – Evgeny Morozov • You put a group of people in that come from a variety of backgrounds and who are out there in the world with different opinions and different ways of expressing themselves online. It’s hard to say. – Allison Grodner • You thought you could figure that out online? Somehow I don’t think hellions are much into social networking. – Rachel Vincent

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'a', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_a').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_a img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'e', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_e').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_e img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'i', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_i').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_i img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'o', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_o').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_o img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'u', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_u').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_u img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

0 notes

equitiesstocks · 4 years

Text

Online Quotes

Official Website: Online Quotes

<span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start"> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push();

0 notes