#inv3rtebrate

[fursasaida]

inv3rtebrate replied to your post “the prof I’m TAing for: your job is to simplify the material as much...”

Hey that's teaching! Constant adjustment needed cause you never know what the students do & don't know. (Incidentally, I wouldn't have been able to answer your lowball question re: loosening regulations back in college, bc my high school social science education was total crap involving zero theory and using textbooks published in 1987, so)

yeah, I am trying to keep it framed that way in my mind! The combination of having aimed too high (which in this case went along with underpreparing due to not being able to do any work whatsoever Thursday through Sunday and having my own classes Monday and Wednesday) and being EXTREMELY tired is making me feel pretty low about it (I literally had to pause more than once and figure out what the hell I was saying today, it’s not a great look), but I know it’s bound to happen. And I know I changed at least one person’s mind about welfare, so hey.

Yeah, the student who answered that question is generally really on the ball. I think it’s harder to judge what people do and don’t know because this class is about social inequality in the city, and so the students--who, you know, experience that directly (especially given this student body)--come to it with a lot of experience and life/family history that’s relevant, plus preconceptions from just Living In Society. The upside of this is that I can absolutely get them to talk and even debate, even if nobody did the reading; they have something to draw on. The downside is that you never know when it’s going to turn out that, sure, somebody knows why people argue over things like Amazon HQ2 or Hudson Yards, but they don’t understand the difference between a publicly and privately funded project. I feel like every time I do small group activities it’s basically a ruse to force them to actually engage with the texts they were assigned, because otherwise it’s just people saying their opinions--not that that has no educational value, but I think I owe them more than that. But that’s exactly where I ran into trouble today, lol.

[star-anise]

inv3rtebrate replied to your post “Me: WHY CAN’T PEOPLE SEE I’M A GOOD PERSON Friend: You’re a good...”

I think though (for me) there's something about how the voices in my brain whisper to me that "validation has to be earned" -- that it doesn't count that my friends find me good, because they're people who like me (and are therefore biased!) and if I'm REALLY good then people who have no reason to like me will show/tell me that I'm good anyway. (which of course is fucked up, but that's what the brain whispers say)

I feel like we all need this today:

I couldn't find a viable transcript, sorry, but I do have some notes written up.

In it she uses the imagery of Theodore Roosevelt's "man in the arena" passage, this one:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.

"If you've committed to creating in your life," she says, there is only one guarantee: "you are gonna get your ass kicked."

And then shares a decision she reached:

"If you're not in the arena, also getting your ass kicked, I'm not interested in your feedback."

Because she talks about who we invite into the arena, whose opinion we care about: "I thought, if you're my fan, if you're here supporting me, how important could you be? Like, I'm trying to win over the people who hate me. You simply love me. You just hold my hair back when I'm puking, you pay bills with me and raise kids with me, how important could you be? I'm looking for the stranger in the mall. That's who I'm trying to win over."

Then later: "We're so self-critical. And one of the things that I think happens... is there is an ideal of what you're supposed to be. And what a lot of us end up doing is we orphan the parts of ourselves that do not fit with what that ideal is supposed to be. And what it leaves when we orphan all those parts of ourselves is it just leaves the critic."

She talked so much about being committed to courage as a virtue and the necessary commitment to action in the face of the risk of failure (DAMMIT) I went and looked up her bit on courage from The Gifts of Imperfection:

“Courage is a heart word. The root of the word courage is cor - the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage meant "To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart." Over time, this definition has changed, and today, we typically associate courage with heroic and brave deeds. But in my opinion, this definition fails to recognize the inner strength and level of commitment required for us to actually speak honestly and openly about who we are and about our experiences -- good and bad. Speaking from our hearts is what I think of as "ordinary courage.”

And love:

We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection. Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them.

[drivingsideways]

inv3rtebrate replied to your post: I am never over Hal Gates :(( Jack and...

you know what I’d like to see in the world? I’d like to see stories about mr gates and miranda. (I think when he took richard guthrie ot her house it’s implied that they at least know each other by face… and boy there must be good stories there)

y’know, i’ve been obsessed with the idea of writing a pre/post maria aleyne Miranda/James fic, and now I’m like what about a pre/post Maria Aleyne Hal & Miranda fic and whether Hal was one of the few people she talked to, one of the few people James let into that little sanctuary he carves out and then after Maria Aleyne, does Hal see her face as she clasps James to her and tbh I’m enraged that you brought this to my attention

[sea-changed]

inv3rtebrate replied to your photoset: Today in “things that have ruined my entire...

“it just punched my emotions in the goddamn throat” is ABOUT RIGHT THANKS FOR THAT

I had to suffer, so now ALL OF YOU DO TOO.

sidewaystime replied to your photoset: Today in “things that have ruined my entire...

I needed to know this though!

It’s such absolutely crucial information, tbh. I had been convinced for some reason that she wasn’t wearing it in 1715, but I’m so glad I went back and checked, because it makes so much sense with the other info we’re given about what’s going on with her and it just absolutely fucking kills me.

[cesperanza]

inv3rtebrate

replied to your photoset

“typhoidmeri: pollydoodles: comic-commentary: from...”

THE BEST. I will venture further and posit that Steve Rogers loves vacuum cleaners but hates dishwashers (and still soaps/scrubs his socks and underwear by hand), bc 1) gosh so much water so wasteful and 2) it's just not as clean as doing it yourself

I AGREE with your head canon - dishwashers are useless to Steve not just because of the waste but because if you only have like, you know, one dish or two mugs or whatever, it makes no sense. Dishwashers and washing machines are about volume really. Dishwashers are only great a) post dinner party where you’re using more different forks than Steve ever knew existed or b) if you need to sterilize, IDK, baby bottles or something but even that - I had a kid with no washing machine and no dishwasher and shockingly, spoiler alert: it was fine! And we all agree that Steve line-dries his clothes, right? :D

[anghraine]

Hi this is random but: I found your blog through your recent Rogue One ethics post and started trawling through your LOTR tags... Queue 1.5 hrs of me yelling DENETHORRRRRR!!! My much maligned and underappreciated fave! And your post about movie Gondor lacking aesthetics (esp comp to Rogan) is 100% on point! Thanks for being awesome!

Oh, you’re welcome!

LOTR was actually the first online fandom I got into  (I think I was 17?), so I’ve had lots of time to polish my grudges, lol. Especially since Faramir is my favourite Tolkien character, so I run into The Denethor Discourse a lot. But Denethor is one of my all-time faves too, so I’m pretty perpetually >:|.

Thanks about movie Gondor, too! I feel it gets overwhelmed by the coolness of the Pelennor battle and the WRONGWRONGWRONG of most Gondorian characters, but it’s just this ... shell. *grumpy Gondorian stan fistbump*

[fursasaida]

inv3rtebrate replied to your video “My old a cappella group took 2nd place in the ICCA finals recently....”

A-MA-ZING

1) trust institutional knowledge to credit everything to a man ://////// 2) the singing and arrangements are pretty great, though I do gotta root for beyonce 3) do you still make music now? would support if/when I visit DC

Thank you! (I ended up...writing a lot, so, a cut) 

When I joined that group it was the saddest attempt at a college group you’ve ever seen, the leadership sucked, nobody was even writing new arrangements, I poured so much of myself my first year into just writing arrangements, choosing solos for them, encouraging others to write, suggesting we have some kind of standard of how we went onstage, just like basic shit that in my second year I actually burst into tears with a couple of other new officers and was like “I really need you guys to make some decisions I’m dying here.” Then the guy who would become my A Cappella Partner joined and there was a lot of weird in-group politics which I successfully navigated to stage a Coup and put him and myself in charge, and we spent the next two years rolling this fucking boulder uphill turning it into the group you see in that video. If you liked that you should watch this, which was their ICCA set the year after I graduated and still, IMO, the best thing they’ve ever done, and for which I take a good deal of like, institutional groundwork-laying credit. The perfect metaphor for the whole thing is that the female soloist in that set is someone I fought tooth and nail against EVERYBODY else to let into the group, lost, and then after I left she auditioned again and got in and she literally is a professional arranger/recording engineer in a cappella To This Day. I WAS RIGHT!! ABOUT EVERYTHING!! AND SHE DOESN’T EVEN KNOW BECAUSE SHE JOINED AFTER I LEFT!!!

To answer your numbered points: 1) It’s less a sexism thing than a result of some very specific Events, some of which I’d prefer not to get into; but also because my partner was a grad student he stayed around a lot longer and continues to write arrangements for them, so literally just...they all know him. Whereas I moved 1000 miles away immediately after graduating. 

2) MUCH credit to same partner for the singing and arrangements. I don’t think he did any of these, but the group’s whole approach to arranging, as well as to delivery--messing with tone, focusing on the strength and skill of the block more than soloists, etc.--comes from him. This is why I staged our Coup, because I could see what he had to offer and everybody else was too busy being annoyed at him being pushy for a new guy. In fact, the thing that first ~put us on the map~ was a Ben Folds cover we did that’s on the album Ben Folds put out of college groups covering his songs; and the fact that we had that arrangement ready to submit was because of me. Partner wanted us to do this very choral-style arrangement he’d already done for someone else of a Josh Groban song, and nobody wanted to do Josh Groban, and it was all very tense. So I said (this was the start of the Coup), well, I like the idea of a choral arrangement very much, as a lot of our intake pool will have been in choirs in high school; could we take the same approach to another song? So he wrote that arrangement and everything started from there. School choirs cover it regularly, we opened for Ben Folds one time, and it has 274,000 YouTube views. YOU’RE WELCOME, EVERYONE, FOR MY BRILLIANT MANAGEMENT.

3) I do not do any music currently, aside from the weird workings of my subconscious creating bizarre mash-ups or noting that certain songs are The Same and then sometimes posting about it on tumblr. When I was in the midst of being incredibly serious about this group I sort of thought about trying to pursue music more, but I decided ultimately I was talented, but not talented enough to make it plausible; and anyway I was more talented at other things (politics, analysis, etc.--which in fact my key role in the group became political management and institution building, so everything kind of lines up there). But I appreciate your asking very much!

[fursasaida]

inv3rtebrate replied to your link “China's crazy smog-sucking vacuum tower is actually working”

1) having lived in Beijing recently: yeahno they're going to need like a thousand of these for every mid sized+ Chinese city to begin to make any kind of difference, and 2) that smog jewelry is some LotR level wackery someone better start scouting for volcanos to chuck those evil things in

sounds about right, thanks :/