#alarajrogers

[tapacamino]

omg I finally got crabs! 💜😭😭

Thank you, Alara!

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

What do you think of The Orville as a franchise vs Star Trek?

Star Trek is a series of movies, The Orville is a series of TV episodes. The TV is on the same sort of scale as your typical "kids' show" and has to work within the constraints of being aimed at a much older audience. The movie isn't on that scale, and is trying to do more serious and adult storytelling.

Like, I don't think the movies are on the same "scale" as, say, TNG, but there are some shows (I think The Venture Bros. was one) that are on the "kids' TV" level. You could say that's the kind of thing Star Trek is, even more than the original series, but it feels like the TV shows were a compromise in the first place and that's part of why they have the "silly comedy" and "drama" labels, not "humorous drama" and "silly comedy." (The Orville is trying to do that and so far is sort of succeeding, I'll say that.)

The TV shows are also meant to be enjoyed on their own and not as part of any larger franchise -- that's very different from a TV series which is very much an extension of a movie franchise, as the Star Trek TV series was. Star Trek is a TV series because movies were what had been done, and TV has the potential to do what movies don't (but Star Trek does more of that anyway). (For an example of the "pushing things towards TV" thing -- it's not just kids' shows and it's not just comedy, but there's also Star Trek's "we're always coming back to this one planet" feel, where if you want to spend more time in an episode, you have to spend it in one place and get more background there.)

I don't mind TV being set in Star Trek, although it isn't Star Trek as much anymore than kids' shows were Star Trek when they started being kids' shows -- but that's true of TOS, as well as everything that came later. TV is, as much as anything, an extension of movies and a lot of the time it is not the kind of thing you'd want to experience as a kid, but that's a different question.

I'm not really watching Star Trek for plot reasons (I don't want to say "I don't watch Star Trek to watch the plot"; I will say that in terms of like, "plot events that happen in the course of an episode" -- and this is a large part of what you see in the TV show -- they're often not my thing) but I certainly watch it for the aesthetic reasons. A lot of the aesthetic values that appeal to me in Star Trek are, if I were to describe the appeal of the TV show with a single word, "surreal." Like, there's a sense of how a certain kind of logic could work and yet not quite work.

I have a lot of strong feelings on what makes this stuff "work," and they're not so much the same thing as what makes things "work" with a specific character, but the overall aesthetic experience of "this has the potential to work in this way, but it just won't here." I can think of a few stories that work this way. I think of the way the "Star Trek" episode from The Twilight Zone is "about," the way it has narrative tension, but it works because the premise has no real consequences. I think of the "TNG episode where everybody turns into blue aliens but then they're all right" -- or, more realistically, "the episode that shows us the Enterprise crew in situations that have been hinted at but not shown, but it's still a "fun" episode." I can think of more "this could work if it did, but it really doesn't."

This is probably partly "because I'm a nerd," but I think it's also something that a lot of things could get right if they just "worked to be in Star Trek" without all the special effects and so on -- it's like one of those rules for how the world should look and work that most people intuitively get from the world but they can't justify it in terms of physical laws. I don't know. This stuff is more interesting to me than most things. (I don't know if anyone really "gets" any of this, but I guess I'm just saying, there's a "kind of Star Trek" that could have existed and was good, but didn't, as opposed to a "kind of Star Trek" that might have existed and would have been not good, but did not.)

[tapacamino]

My husband observed that our cockatoo was really freaked out by being able to see through our windshield when I was driving 60 miles an hour, guessed this might be because cockatoos cannot fly that fast, and did this whole thing about Birdperson being freaked out by Rick's driving, and Rick is like "w-w-we go faster than, than light all the time, Person, what's your problem" and Birdperson is like "there are no potential obstacles we could hit when traveling faster than light, and besides, you are drunk" and Squanchy is yelling to just let him drive, he's not drunk, and Birdperson is reminding him about the catnip, and Rick is telling Birdperson he needs to get out on planets more

sdjkhakdjda this is great. I bet they had multiple "road rage" fights while travelling. And at least two thirds of them were them being high.

Picturing your cockatoo yelling the entire time you've driving.

[landofwindandskyscrapers]

A gift. For @alarajrogers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacu

[comicberks]

alarajrogers reblogged your photo:robofists-revenge: Making it really hard to care...

Hey, can anyone tell me if this has as much shaky-cam going on as the original? I couldn’t watch the original –...

It does not!

[script-a-world]

Are there any programs that are good for designing really bizarrely shaped planets, putting a light source in place, and then making either the light source or the planet rotate so you can see what the day/night cycle looks like? I have this insanely complicated Dyson Sphere with a mechanism for rotating a blockage of the sun at the center so that the Dyson Sphere can have day/night cycles, and also, I read that a toroid planet is possible and I want to see the sun go around a donut.

Miri: My roomie is big on tech/film stuff, so I poked him and he said what you’re trying to do is called “ray tracing” and suggested a program called Art of Illusion, which is free to download.  http://www.artofillusion.org/downloads (Synth says they have had some past experience with it and aren’t sure if it has improved since then, but it may be a bit meh. There’s a lot of tutorials available on the site.)

Bina: Try the free 3d rendering and animation program Blender! I made a gif of a rotating globe of my planet using Blender relatively easily. There are definitely tutorials for anything you want to accomplish in terms of putting 3d shapes in space and rotating them and adding light sources. 

The learning curve might be a bit high, but it's a powerful tool that'll let you do any modeling of a planet/sun system that you need. 

Blender's site:https://www.blender.org/ 

Torus modeling:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIA6pEUpLTw 

Rotate and aim a light around a fixed point:https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/66130/have-a-lamp-rotate-around-a-fixed-spot

Werew: I think Sculptris might be able to do this as well, and it's extremely easy to use. http://pixologic.com/sculptris/

Synth: 123D Design from Autodesk is a very basic 3D drafting/rendering program, which I think has a torus as one of its default paste-this-right-in shapes. Been a while since I used it so I'm not sure if it has lighting options too. http://autodesk-123d-design.en.lo4d.com/

Fusion360 is a more advanced 3D drawing/drafting/rendering program from Autocad (kind of way more advanced than 123D Design, but not as crazyawesome as Inventor) that can probably do all that. (There’s a 30 day free trial, but you can register to continue using free if it’s for hobby use.) https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/free-trial

You could also keep it in meatspace and grab a drinking glass, a flashlight and a doughnut/bagel, then balance the bagel on the glass (or poke it on a skewer or whatevs), shut off the lights and physically walk around it to see how a sun might illuminate a toroidal planet.

[obsessingmuch]

im sorry but i did *NOT* expect to be inundated with pure abuse after my post about the peacock sexual harassment.

i can't reply to everyone, but here are some:

@melruse i didn’t say they *were* catcalling teenagers. i said it was *like* catcalling. but either way, it’s equally bad. just because they’re birds it doesn't mean you can excuse their behaviour.

@pibgeon why should i fuck off just because i’ve expressed an important fact that people need to see?

@mythicalmarkiplite1799 i think you’ll find it’s the birds that are stupid, thank you. and men.

@alarajrogers i appreciate the serious response. how do you know peahens are genuinely impressed? maybe some peahens are, but there are probably others who don’t want to be bothered all the time by males manspreading their tails all over the place. also, i don’t think it’s right for you to speak on behalf of peahens when you are not one.

@engiebears there’s no need to be overdramatic about this.

@otterish yes. finally, someone.

@slapshotsandcupcakes erm don’t you think it’s important to stand up for animal rape too??

@bipolarmisandrist but they’re not giving leaves or things to other birds of similar ages. theyre *displaying*. it’s like flashing. and not even at other birds their age. at all sorts of things! it’s disgusting.

@werewhiskey again, i didn’t say they were humans. i don’t understand why people are so confused about this?

@socialscoldings please see above. also, i don’t see why condoning gay rape is any better? men can get raped too. i’m also not saying that the birds shouldn’t eat, so i don’t see why you made that lion comment. putting meat in front of lions is ok because lions need to eat food. men do not need to rape women.

@ginnungegap THANK YOU.

@smolgera what about the ducks? i’m worried.

@pigcatapult thank you for the suggestion. i’ll certainly look into it. i’ve also been thinking about the comparison since bipolarmisandrist’s comment about flowers. perhaps catcalling was a little incorrect, as that is vocal abuse rather than physical. i said flashing earlier, but i can see that stripping and lifting weights might also be an appropriate comparison. and that shouldn’t be tolerated. random boys stripping in front of their teachers and other students throughout the day without consent? it’s just not ok.

@lookatthisbabybird i’m sorry your head hurt, but sometimes you have to face up to the problems that we have in this world.

@littlerosebirb i’m not sure how the two are related but i hope you’re feeling better now :)

@cicel-gaiden i think you’ll find that threatening sexual behaviour often begins at quite a young age, and those early signs should *not* be ignored. those birds may not have raped anyone yet but they could, and this sort of “display” shouldn't be promoted.

[undiagnosedautismfeels]

tuaf when they have you fill out a form for your son to identify whether he has Asperger's, and you say no to all the questions because he doesn't do that thing any more than you do so plainly that is normal, and then the teachers show you their version of the form and they've identified that he does all those things and obviously has Aspergers and you think... okay, so that explains why I was such a weird kid...