i want my shows one episode followed by a whole ass week of going a little insane over it with the people on my phone, writing fics theorizing and going over every single scene through amazing gifs and meta, before the next ep drops and the cicle begins anew
Binging and whole season drops also seem to be a bit hard on fandoms and fan content creation.
Looking at eg. House of the Dragon last year, which spaced out 10 episodes over 10 weeks (that is 2 1/2 months) and the fandom content production and fandom discussions over multiple platforms were so high! It gave fans time to speculate, to produce and to wait for. It held the anticipation high and invigorated the fandom over a long time.
But Netflix (or other streaming services) when they drop a whole season in one go? I feel yes, many fans will watch it. But the vibe is very different. And there will be discussions and fan content, but I feel it is not necessarily good for a fandom in the long run. The built-up does not carry these fandoms as long for "casual" fans and will not bring the same influx of new fans and new content to those fandoms. And that is sad for fan spaces in my opinion.
It's not just fandom. When I teach popular culture, I also mention how binge culture is destroying the social function of shows.
In the traditional broadcasting structure, you have an episode a week at a set time - you sit down and you watch it, maybe make a family thing out of it. The next day you go to work, and your coworkers have seen the episode too, and you talk about it - because a tv show is a safe topic (not political, not too personal), so you have something to bond over/socialize.
But when a whole season drops at the same time... You either force yourself to binge it, turning your schedule upside down, or you watch it in bits, risking to fall behind. Say a popular show drops a season on a Saturday. On Monday at work, there will be people who haven't started it, people who are half-through, people who have finieshed it... Mix with the fear-of-spoilers culture, suddenly this point of bonding becomes restricted, even eradicated.
It’s also destroying show production. These days if a season isn’t binged in the first week — fully, completed, watched all the way through in THE FIRST WEEK — it doesn’t get renewed. There’s no opportunity for shows to grow legs and catch on. Netflix would’ve canceled The X-Files. Netflix would’ve canceled so many classic shows that were allowed to find their audience gradually.
Meanwhile, no person ever: “You should think about giving up your insulin/antiretrovirals/beta blockers/anti-rejection drugs/prosthetic legs/daily multivitamin, because using those your whole life is bad for some reason”
People who are fully healthy, fit and neurotypical seem to think they are that way because they’re doing something right that the rest of us haven’t thought of, and not just because they got lucky
Speaking of the luck of the non-disabled…I once terrorized a Karen who was using me to teach her entitled kid that disabled people are Other and should not be treated with respect. I told her (truthfully) that until I was twenty-eight, I wasn’t visibly disabled. Then a defective chromosome that I hadn’t known about kicked in. So my luck ran out. But until then, I had been normal–just…like…her.
The sheer terror on her face as the concept of “You mean I’ve just been lucky so far?” seeped into her brain was a thing of beauty.
People who are fully healthy, fit and neurotypical seem to think they are that way because they’re doing something right that the rest of us haven’t thought of, and not just because they got lucky
“You are one stroke of bad luck, common viral illness, or traumatic event away from being just like me” is honestly the most terrifying thing you can tell an abled person - and you should. I was healthy and fit and doing everything ‘right’ too - right up until some inner switch flipped and my body crumbled right out from under me.
1 in four people are disabled, and most people become disabled given they live long enough.
There is a very real problem of people shaping their identities around their abled-ness, and their worlds crashing down around them when they do become disabled. It does a lot of damage to those people; and say what you will about “deserving” it, but teaching people to become comfortable with the likelihood that their lives will change in that way eventually not only does a lot of good for them, but it does a lot to teach them compassion and respect for disabled folks as well.
listen. listen. the consumption of animal products is about mutually beneficial relationships Not domination and that's why prioritizing animal r*ghts over animal welfare is an absolutely brain fungus take to have
urban leftists who've never so much as raised a chicken will be like "umm think about the politics of your diet???" because they can't conceive of the fact that domestication is an incredibly sweet gig for most livestock where they don't have to look for their own food or shelter or water are protected from predators and also get free healthcare and a quick clean death
The actual issues with our current livestock system are because of capitalism and industrialization. Can we please focus our energy on the global paradigm being cruel and unsustainable to us, the planet, AND livestock instead of getting lost in virtue signaling
"For most of human history, the anticruelty ethic and laws expressing it sufficed to encapsulate social concern for animal treatment for one fundamental reason: During that period, and today as well, the majority of animals used in society were agricultural, utilized for food, fiber, locomotion, and power. Until the mid-20th century, the key to success in animal agriculture was good husbandry, a word derived from the old Norse term for ‘‘bonded to the household.’’ Humans were in a contractual, symbiotic relationship with farm animals, with both parties living better than they would outside of the relationship. We put animals into optimal conditions dictated by their biological natures, and augmented their natural ability to survive and thrive by protecting them from predation, providing food and water during famine and drought, and giving them medical attention and help in birthing. The animals in turn provided us with their products (e.g., wool and milk), their labor, and sometimes their lives, but while they lived, their quality of life was good. Proper husbandry was sanctioned by the most powerful incentive there is: self-interest! The producer did well if and only if the animals did well. Husbandry was thus about putting square pegs in square holes, round pegs in round holes, and creating as little friction as possible doing so. Had a traditional agriculturalist attempted to raise 100,000 chickens in one building, they would all have succumbed to disease within a month."
Rollin, B.E. (2005). Animal Agriculture and Social Ethics for Animals, Encyclopedia of Animal Science. Marcel Dekker, New York.
listen. listen. the consumption of animal products is about mutually beneficial relationships Not domination and that's why prioritizing animal r*ghts over animal welfare is an absolutely brain fungus take to have
urban leftists who've never so much as raised a chicken will be like "umm think about the politics of your diet???" because they can't conceive of the fact that domestication is an incredibly sweet gig for most livestock where they don't have to look for their own food or shelter or water are protected from predators and also get free healthcare and a quick clean death
The actual issues with our current livestock system are because of capitalism and industrialization. Can we please focus our energy on the global paradigm being cruel and unsustainable to us, the planet, AND livestock instead of getting lost in virtue signaling
I've finally gotten around to seasons 6 and 7 of Shetland and...maybe it's just the shipper in me, but it feels like they introduced Meg simply because Jimmy and Duncan were getting a little TOO close.
I was raised agnostic and tend to remain ambiguous on theological matters.
-but my house has a porch on the second story that affords me a terrific view of my neighborhood and the Colorado Front Range and I was partaking of some peace before the 4th Of July Finger-Loss Festivities begin, and I have had a
~*Spiritual Experience*~
I just watched my neighbor try to unload an actual wooden pallet that had to have been forklifted into the back of his insecurity pickup worth of fireworks.
Except that he does not have a forklift in his garage.
He does have so much sports memorabilia and cardboard boxes of unsold MLM Merchandise and patriotically themed camping gear and posters of women in bikinis and flags of suspect political organizations in his garage that there is only
BARELY
enough space for the fireworks
and certainly none for his truck.
So he had to unload the individual boxes of recreational explosives from the back of his truck and stack them in the minimal space he had cleared by hand.
This is a tedious and time-consuming process as this neighbor has purchased a wide variety of recreational and locally illegal explosives instead of many of just a few types, so the individual boxes are rather small.
He begins,
and this is crucial to what happens next,
by cutting apart the industrial-grade saran wrap his explosives dealer had so carefully wrapped his merchandise in, and discarded it
unsecured
on his lawn.
Where Outdoor Conditions sometimes happen.
His process for unloading the fireworks is to
1. Climb up through the gate into the bed of his pickup truck (a feat made unusually difficult due to the slope of his driveway, and this man's fascinating decision to wear the world's Siffest and least Flexible Denim Overalls.
2. Once in the pickup bed, he selects ONE (1) box from the pile
He is apparently from a niche religious institution that doesn't believe in stacking things.
3. Carries it awkwardly around the palette that barely fits in the truck bed
4. His wife yells "Be careful!" when he nearly falls out of the pickup.
5. He Yells "SHADDUP!" back at her.
6. The Large German Shepherd barks from inside the house.
7. He yells "SHADDUP!" back at her too.
8. He sets the (1) box down on the gate
9. Slowly and awkwardly climbs out of the pickup bed
10. picks the box back up, and carries it into the garage.
Question: Aren't you going to help this poor man?
Answer: Absolutely Not.
There's four military veterans, MANY dogs, and several people with dementia in this neighborhood, all of whom are terrified by this chicanery every year and many neighbors have repeatedly asked him to maybe do the fireworks somewhere else.
(This is the Eighth Year Running he's held a major demolition event in his driveway, and for those of you who can do math, you may be able to guess the precipitating incident to this little ritual)
Additionally, I live in Colorado, a state marginally less prone to spontaneous and catastrophic conflagrations than a rotting grain silo, but only marginally.
Our recreational explosives laws are written accordingly.
I am in fact calling the Non Emergency line to report Fireworks violations, and reading off the brand labels to someone named Dorothy, who is gleefully totaling up a SPECTACULAR fine for my oblivious neighbor.
However, while I'm on the phone with Dorothy, I notice the wind begin to pick up.
and by "Notice" I mean "The Industrial Saran Wrap he left on his Lawn earlier is suddenly swept up about 100 feet into the air by an updraft intense enough to make my ears pop"
And by "Pick Up" I mean "I look up to see the sky has turned a fun and exciting shade of glass green, and the bottoms of the clouds are bumpy and rounded, and the overall effect is not unlike looking up through the bottom of the cup at God's Matcha Boba Tea."
For those of you who do not live in places with Inclement Weather, these conditions mean "You have about 30 seconds before a Major Meteorological Event Occurs."
I move under the eaves.
"Hang on Dorothy." I say, nose filling with Petrichor. "The show is about to be cancelled."
"Oh, that doesn't matter!" Dorothy cheerfully informs me. "It's illegal for him just to possess those, no matter if he actually gets to set them off or not."
"Terrific, because he's gotten maybe five boxes out of a hundred inside."
Sometimes,
the weather gods are Merciful and give you a verbal warning, typically in the kind of thunderclap that makes your ears ring.
The Gods were not merciful today.
It's not often that I am in the time, place, correct angle or in a properly observational frame of mind to see this,
But I got to see it today.
Huh. I thought. I've never seen a cloud just DIVE for the ground before.
Oh. I realized as it got closer.
That's RAIN.
Sometimes, a thunderstorm will form in such a way that the rain that would normally be distributed over an area of say,
five to tent square miles,
is instead concentrated into an area of say,
my neighborhood exactly.
So today, I was granted the rare privilege of being able to actually see the literal wall of water descend from On High and DIRECTLY onto my porch, my street, and my neighbor's truck, and his pile of unwrapped fireworks.
The sheer impact force of the downpour immediately scatters the teetering pile of fireworks boxes in the back of the truck, like the wrath of God striking down the tower of Babel.
Boxes tumble, then are washed out of the bed of the truck by the deluge.
Smaller Boxes are carried down the road in a little line by the stream forming in the gutter, like little impotent explosive ducklings.
My neighbor was definitely yelling something, but I could not hear what over the DEAFENING noise several million gallons of water makes upon high-speed contact with the earth's surface, but there was a lot of arm-waving and faces turning red as he went looking for the saran wrap that had probably blown to Nebraska by now, while his wife started disassembling the complex three-dimensional puzzle of interlocking material goods in search of a tarp.
They do not have a tarp.
They have one of those wretched Thin Blue Line flags though, and my neighbor jogs out in a futile effort to cover what's left in the truck.
Which is when the hail begins.
"HELLO?" Yelled Dorothy.
"HI!" I shouted. "WE'RE HAVING SOME WEATHER!"
"OH GOOD!" she shouts back. "WE NEED THE MOISTURE!"
I watch for a minute longer, but the loss was immediate and catastrophic- the hail is the size of marbles and dense and cares not for your pitiful cardboard and cellophane, ripping the boxes asunder and punching holes in the few things covered in plastic.
The colors on the Thin Blue Line Flag are seeping all over the remains of that it was supposed to protect in a particularly apt visual metaphor.
Not even the few boxes that made it into the garage are spared, as the German Shepherd escapes from indoors, and in an attempt to assist her humans, jumps directly into the small stack of not-yet-ruined boxes, scattering them into the driveway and deluge. She even picks one up so her humans will chase her around the yard, before dropping it in the gutter to be swept away.
So.
I was raised Agnostic
-but even I can recognize when God slaps someone upside the head and shouts "NO!" at them.
---
(If you laughed, please consider supporting my Ko-fi or preordering my book of Strange Stories on Patreon)
For those who don't know and missed the Batgirl movie drama, if Star Trek: Prodigy doesn't find a new home it will be written off as a tax break. That means, it will be as if it never existed. They won't refer to it, there will never be a sequel. It won't come back to streaming anywhere ever nor will discs or merchandise ever be sold again. To do so would get Paramount in huge legal trouble. So enjoy season one while you can because this show may well be hit with Annorax's Temporal weapon and it'll be as if it never was. And that is very, very sad.
areudirty
stormborns
gummygunk
vaporwave
blakekathryn
jbbartram-illu
