Breaking Out of Established Patterns

This is a journal blog that I am keeping for my class, "Rediscovering Your Creativity". (Title from Edward de Bono quote)

[nitewrighter]

You might be frustrated by the library never having a complete manga collection on its shelves at any given time, but the 12 year old checking out 14 volumes of One Piece at once is vital to the library ecosystem. He's like the sea otter keeping the kelp forest from being devastated by an excess of sea urchins.

[chess-blackmyre]

To those curious some other keystone library species include:

—the retirees who’ve read more murder mysteries than I’ve had hot meals

—the paperback romance girlies (gender neutral) who check out every single bodice ripper the second it hits the shelves

—the dads very slowly making their way through a ‘1001 movies to see before you die’ list

—the one-man criterion collection who checks out like, three movies per day and brings them back the next. (TV series are only a minor roadblock.)

—kids who like Minecraft

[nitewrighter]

---The new parents checking out 47 picture books for their 7 month old baby who clearly has nothing going on in their head except the Wii Sports Resort theme song

[isuggestusingyourlocallibrary]

I suggest using your local library!

[thekidsfromyestergay]

Nobody ever talks about the fact that heavy metal basically only exists because of a disability

[thekidsfromyestergay]

For context: the reason metal sounds the way it does is because Tony Iommi, guitarist of Black Sabbath, lost his fingertips in a factory accident. Doctors told him he would never be able to play again, so he spent months burning down plastic and covering it with leather to essentially create new fingertips. Of course, he still couldn't play in the same way, so he downtuned his guitars and found new ways to play parts that made them sound even bigger and heavier than before, and that's how the sound of heavy metal was created!

[thekidsfromyestergay]

Not to use him as inspiration porn but it really is incredible that an entire huge genre exists not in spite of but specifically BECAUSE of a disability

[carpintransa]

Also worth mentioning he was inspired by Django Reinhardt!

"My friend said, "Listen to this guy play", and I went, "No way! Listening to someone play the guitar is the very last thing I want to do right now!" But he kept insisting and he ended up playing the record for me. I told him I thought it was really good and then he said, "You know, the guy's only playing with two fingers on his fretboard hand because of an injury he sustained in a terrible fire." I was totally knocked back by this revelation and was so impressed by what I had just heard that I suddenly became inspired to start trying to play again."

[itsagifnotagif]

Hey Emma

[imagineherbrightskies]

Alright who the fuck here is Emma Roberts show yourself you coward

[africanaquarian]

I thought I needed a new laptop but nope, youtube is slowing down your PC if you have adblock on on any open tab...

[astraltrickster]

To be very clear about this: CPUs aren't magical devices that can operate forever. They generate heat. They wear out over time. This happens faster when they're operating near capacity. This is not just an attempt to inconvenience you; this is an attempt to damage your property.

For the "crime" of not wanting to be tracked/have ads pissed into your eyeballs 24/7.

Even if you've paid for the "privilege" of the latter.

Fuck Google, and I hope they get sued into oblivion over this.

[fernwah-funzone]

i see everyone in the notes talking about newpipe but nobody's talking about youtube alternatives for desktop

IF YOU USE A DESKTOP PC OR LAPTOP, TRY INVIDIOUS

https://invidious.io/

it is a free, open-source alternative YouTube front-end. in addition to not having ads, it has other great QoL features like a download button. try one of the several instances on that link up there ^^^^

[everythingfox]

Must check car brakes

[liberalsarecool]

Conservative politics are an incubator for the worst people to manipulate the dullest of minds.

Conspiracy theories give the D-student oxygen.

[stolenavalanche]

We were all told as kids, "don't use Wikipedia as a source." But for the love of god, please support wikipedia. It provides so much free knowledge to the public. It is a public resource. I've seen how fast y'all will fund AO3. Do the same for Wikipedia.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Lilo & Stitch is a great example of a story that has no villains. It has antagonists, sure, but most of them are well-meaning. The worst person in the film is that little shit Myrtle, but she’s not in the film that much anyway.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Since this post is getting traction I want to clarify how not-villainous the antagonists are:

The Grand Councilwoman is literally just responding to what she sees as a threat to the galaxy and is extremely reasonable.

Gantu is much the same. He’s a bit overzealous, yes, but he thinks he’s saving the galaxy from stitch.

Cobra Bubbles is literally just doing his job, he’s obviously not happy about it but he is doing what he feels is best for Lilo. And much like the Councilwoman, he is extremely reasonable.

Myrtle is, again, just a little shit. She’s a schoolyard bully and is truly small potatoes.

Jumba calls himself an “evil scientist,” but literally nothing supports that. His only onscreen crime is creating a bunch of Pokémon that have powers that will mildly inconvenience people and can be persuaded to be nice over the course of 22 - 90 minutes, to say nothing of himself seeing as he decides to change his ways at the softest bit of persuasion.

Pleakley is literally just gay.

[a-method-in-it]

The "villain" of Lilo and Stitch is, rather directly, societies and social systems that write people off and do not provide support and care.

It is obvious to the audience -- and deliberately presented this way by the film -- that it is better for Lilo to stay with her sister, even if her sister is a bit of a mess and not financially stable. Mr. Bubbles is not evil. He is there because he wants what's best for Lilo, and he is not unreasonable to think that the sister without a job who leaves the stove on and whose house nearly burned down two days later is not it. The solution is not to "defeat" Mr. Bubbles; the solution would be for society to help Nani succeed, rather than watch as she fails.

Similarly, no one provided any help to Stitch when he was created and discovered. They wrote him off as an abomination, something too dangerous to be destroyed. They weren't evil, and it wasn't unreasonable to think that the experiment created to be an agent of destruction would be better off scrapped. But what would have happened if they had at least tried?

Lilo and Stitch are two characters who were caught in systems that were cold, uncaring, and unsupportive, even if the people in them were not evil and were, in fact, just doing their best.

It's a movie about people who have been written off finding one another and building a found family where they can get and give the support and care they didn't get from the people with authority and I love it so much.

[dryiffsrevitalizingtailholetonic]

something the retro art people forget is that the past still exists in those time periods. Like those photos where every single iconic 80s thing is in the kid’s bedroom–no one lived like that outside of the very wealthy and/or the movies.

Someone kicking around in 1985 was probably living in a house built decades prior, and their parents last renovated in the 70s before the kids were born–because there’s no money for that when you had kids.

I mean look around today, there are plenty of people 10+ years behind the times. Old cars are out there, old fashions, old music–the present day is haunted by the past around every corner, the date doesn’t roll over to a new decade and all the old stuff doesn’t just disappear–it’s all still here.

Those achingly period-appropriate homes you see in movies and TV are just that–sets. Unless you just moved into a brand new home and all your stuff was lost in a fire so you had to replace it your home is not going to be all modern present day shit.

This is also something a lot of future-fiction doesn’t get–the future will have a lot of the past in it, because as humans bumble through life they pick things up and they don’t discard them–Someone who is 40 in 2040 is going to have shit from the 20′s when they got their first apartment or whatever, their home may have been built in 2000 and last remodeled in 2030…what I mean is cutting edge fashions and styles exist on TV but rarely in real life.

[sqbr]

I remember a nice detail in some near-future scifi movie (Minority Report, maybe?) was that the cars on the road were a mixture of weird futuristic designs and beat-up “old” cars- which were brand new (then) present day cars that had been weathered.

Also, it’s really interesting to compare, say, the Phyrnie Fisher mysteries (modern day murder mysteries set in the 1920s) to the Peter Wimsey Mysteries (‘contemporary’ murder mysteries set in the 1920s) Both have protagonists with PTSD from WWI who wear the coolest 1920s fashion and talk about 1920s Discourse And Major Events, but I remember being struck by a little moment in one of the Wimsey books where an old woman is wearing a Victorian dress and talking about being a Victorian who doesn’t understand kids these days. Which a modern day author would be less likely to write, because for most modern people the Victorian Era is a totally distinct setting from the 1920s, rather than a nearby part of the same time continuum.

This got me thinking about my own childhood vs how someone who hadn’t lived it would likely write 1980s Australia. And yeah, I definitely grew up around a lot of items and media from the 1970s and even 1960s, especially in houses maintained by older and poorer people.

But there’s also the way people tend to only write people grappling with Major Events that happened recently (unless it’s something with obvious longterm effects like world wars) So, you know, both real life and a movie set in 1980s Australia would have people talking about the America’s Cup (1983/1987) and Bicentennial (1988), and would plausibly also mention the Vietnam War (1955-1975) since it’s such a well-known milestone. But unless specifically about related topics or based on a memoir etc, the movie would probably not show the lingering effects and conversation around the end of Imperial measurements (1971) and the White Australia Policy (1975). Like, we had a beatup old 70s Corona which measured the speed in miles per hour, and did a (racist) school play about How Australia Isn’t Racist To Italians Any More, etc.

[marzipanandminutiae]

love this post!

I think it’s important to remember, in terms of fashion, that keeping your clothes relatively up-to-date was an aspect of respectability and being “properly dressed” for a long time. sure, most people didn’t have the money (or always the desire) to be 100% on-trend at all times, but wearing clothing more than 10-ish years out of style was very much looked askance at

the story of the old woman in a Victorian dress in the 1920s makes for useful shorthand to signify her relationship with the modern world, and since the books were written in the era it probably happened sometimes. look at these two older ladies from the ‘20s, though:

sure, they’re hardly flappers, but they’re not wearing bustle gowns either

so while you might see a mishmash of furniture eras in someone’s house, their clothing would probably be at least roughly in line with the current silhouette unless they were VERY poor, VERY eccentric/artistic (and not reliant on anyone else’s approval to make their living, or in a field where eccentricity is accepted), or a combination of both

“vintage” style- that is, dressing full-out in the clothing of an earlier era, and not as part of a contemporary revival trend inspired by something that came before, either -didn’t really gain social acceptance until the 1960s. and even now, there are some settings where it’s still considered inappropriate for whatever reason

[theuseofimagination]

WEEK FIFTEEN - CREATIVE ENTRY

Since it is the last week, I figured that I would try a more artistic and less structured creative piece. I looked around my room and saw my iron name art on the wall and was inspired.

[theuseofimagination]

WEEK FIFTEEN - CLASS SESSION

In this second go at prototyping, my group was still stuck on the idea that our solution is getting a Chick-fil-a in Columbia, but that is what will happen if our solution works. Our actual solution is coming along quite well, we just need to execute the plan. When we drew our solutions, there were several drawings of a Chick-fil-a in CoMo, but also of us executing the solution. Then in prototyping, we all worked together to make a little model of a Chick-fil-a, which we then decided to use in our presentation video. Overall, it was fun and we got things done.

[theuseofimagination]

WEEK FOURTEEN - CREATIVE ENTRY

I was in worship the other day, and one of the songs made me think about hope. I've always loved Hope is the thing with feathers, but I thought it could use a twist.

My hope is the Man with scarred hands Who saved my soul, And hears me without words, And never leaves at all,

And welcome most when the gale is heard I lean on Him once more For nothing abashes my bird The One who came before

He’s been there in the chillest land With me on the strangest sea Yet all through eternity, He only asks, “Trust in me.”

[theuseofimagination]

WEEK FOURTEEN - READING ASSIGNMENT

I liked reading about all of the ways to spark your creativity by making, but as I tried to imagine using these for my personal problems, I was unsure how it would work. As a writer, everything seems so much more abstract than play-doh. I’ve tried doodling before, but I always get hung up on trying to make something that looks good. But maybe these are all just excuses. Maybe I need to just try, cycling through each technique until I find one that works. Maybe if I stopped caring if my doodles were good or not, and just doodled, it would help.

[theuseofimagination]

WEEK FOURTEEN - CLASS SESSION

This week, I enjoyed the games that broke up the periods of working together on our project. But when we were working, my group really didn’t have a lot to do since our solution is a “do it and be done” sort of thing. But we do know exactly what we are going to do.

[theuseofimagination]

WEEK THIRTEEN - READING ASSIGNMENT

I like how this chapter gives practical advice and steps to generate ideas. I will definitely come back to it anytime I need a little help with ideas. Although, I’m not sure how much it could help with writer’s block and getting stuck in a story, but it can definitely help generate ideas to begin with.

(I’m glad I got this on Kindle so I can read it on my laptop as well!)

[theuseofimagination]

WEEK THIRTEEN - CREATIVE ENTRY

I feel connected

     right now

No matter the distance

     we are brothers and sisters

Your pain is my pain

Your chains are my chains

Your freedom is my freedom

This kingdom is our Kingdom

  Though our tongues

     use different languages

     our hearts speak the same

No differences matter anymore

No language can separate

No prejudices hold any weight

No government is more powerful than this

  Right now

Yesterday

Tomorrow

¡Cuán grande es nuestro Dios.

Combien grand est notre Dieu!

Наш Бог так велик!

How great is our God!

[theuseofimagination]

WEEK TWELVE - CREATIVE ENTRY

“What Does the Cow Say?”, a parody of What Does the Fox Say? by Ylvis

  There is a

Problem here:

We don’t have

A Chik-fil-a

  Students cry

So much sad

How can we even survive?

  There’s one sound

Everyone knows

What does the cow say?

  Eat more, eat more, eat more chikin

Eat more, eat more, eat more chikin

Eat more, eat more, eat more chikin

What does the student say?

  I love, I love, I love this sauce

I love, I love, I love this sauce

I love, I love, I love this sauce

What does the cow say?

[theuseofimagination]

WEEK TWELVE - CLASS SESSION

Our brainstorming was really exceptional this week, but what will really stick with me is the relaxation exercise in which we visited our muses. It started out normally: after walking us through relaxing, Jennie told us to go somewhere we felt safe and happy as a child. I immediately thought of the backyard of my home in Raymore. I loved to climb my ancient leaning tree, and so there I sat. Then my muse joined me, and suddenly the Tenth Doctor was there in his red converse, brown pinstripe suit, and trench coat, visible just a few branches above me. I smiled, happy to see him, and he grinned his goofy grin back. As I climbed up to him, I looked around and below me. Beneath the tree was my swingset. The house was directly in front of me, with the deck in front of the sliding-glass door. And in the left half of the oval yard, two of my dogs, Ali and Domino, played. At one time, that was a common sight for me. I miss them terribly. Just as suddenly as the Doctor appeared, a deep sadness and painful nostalgia hit me. Superficially, it was as simple as missing a couple dogs, but really it was the fact that it was compounded with stress and my regularly scheduled feminine hormone imbalance that made me break down and cry.

I tried to wipe the tears away, but somehow I had opened the floodgate. Once I was in the bathroom, I allowed myself to give in and let it out. I was sad that I did not get to enjoy the full extent of the relaxation, but I was glad that the Doctor was there with me in the tree. In my mind, I climbed onto his lap and he wrapped me in a hug as I cried. That felt nice.

The only gift I could think of the Doctor giving me was a sonic screwdriver, but since it can unlock, cut, and mend things (as well as many others), it still helps. The sonic screwdriver will help me cut through any creative blocks and unlock any doors that may seem closed to me.