tzikeh

OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 02:56:05 GMT

Imma need a bunch of OFMD icons....

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Avengers: Endgame

Mon, 06 May 2019 02:59:50 GMT

(x-posted to tumblr, pillowfort)

I’m not mad at the movie per se; I’m mad about the narrative construct employed by pretty much any movie/show/insert-form-of-storytelling-here that the death of one or more main characters (especially The Grand Sacrifice For All Humanity) is the only option in a high-stakes situation––anything else, and the payoff is just not enough, somehow. There is no closure without death? That’s a pretty terrible position for storytellers to take.

This is so baked into our collective consciousness that no one stops to think about it and ask, “Well, but… do you mean there’s no other way to bring this story to a satisfying conclusion? Like, none? If no one dies, then the story isn’t satisfying?”

Everyone went into Endgame expecting at least one death of one of Our Heroes, if not more. We expected it because of this pervasive-yet-provably-unfounded narrative cliché, and I don’t think that’s how narrative creators should be approaching storytelling. I think it’s time for a radical change in how we conclude entertainments (re: provably unfounded--see final paragraph of post).

Honestly, from now on, if a storyteller says anything along the lines of “If none of the main characters die, there’s no emotional payoff,” I am going to stop engaging with that storyteller’s works immediately.

You know what would be a huge emotional payoff? Seeing the characters we love–-have loved for ten years-–fighting the good fight, and emerging victorious. Joy is a huge emotional payoff. But we seem unable to question this central tenet of our storytelling, and it leads a lot of writers to purposely write toward crappy endings.

I’m not saying narratives should never include the death of a major character. I love me a heroic sacrifice! But if every high-stakes story means Someone Has To Die, that means that we, both writers and audience, are unconsciously locked into this pattern and blinded to any others such that writers start writing with killing off beloved characters as the goal because now it's the rules, and it doesn’t have to be. The fact that we all “knew” that someone “had” to die, and we “knew” it for, if we’re being honest, even before Infinity War–-I think that’s bad for us. I really do think it’s bad for us.

If anyone ever says that a happily ever after ending in which all of the main characters live isn’t narratively or emotionally satisfying, they have likely absorbed that idea from society's disdain for romance novels and “chick flicks,” which as we know must be objectively terrible because women like them. So here’s what you do. Point that person at the nearest hard-ass, backwards-ballcap-wearing, swole Chicago Cubs fandude, and ask them about the 2016 World Series. Was it gratifying? Did our heroes fight the good fight and emerge victorious? Did everyone go ape-shit? Did we hold a parade? Was it a spectacular, emotion-filled conclusion to a hundred-year-long story?

DID ANYONE ON THE TEAM DIE?

NO?

Joy is a huge emotional payoff.

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Wow, I ... need to buy a paid account again

Wed, 05 Dec 2018 18:56:26 GMT

I'm only allowed to use 10 of my ... more-than-ten icons.

If I buy the 200-icon account, will all of my old posts that now just show my default icon go back to the icon I used when I originally posted them?

Also yeah, hi, I'm back. Whatever, Tumblr.

I'm also under this name... everywhere else. If you are somewhere else and you search for "tzikeh" and it doesn't come up, I'm not there.

(Also hahahaha my icons sure show the exact time-frame I stopped using DW. Looks like it was right around second season of Downton Abbey.

Now comes the part where I start hunting down all my Tumblr-mutuals and such, and add them to my flist.

(aaaa I haven't used the term "flist" in forever....)

Can't even remember how to use tags here. Comma-separated?

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HAPPY BUSTABILITY DAY!

Fri, 04 Jul 2014 17:07:42 GMT

IT'S TIME FOR HOT DOGS AND FIREWORKS AND SONGS ABOUT BEING OBNOXIOUS AND DISLIKED -- in other words, HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!

We are a TERRIBLE FUCKIN' COUNTRY but man, I still love this movie, in the same way I love The West Wing. It makes me feel super-patriotic and joyful about the country I wish I lived in.

I'm posting a whole bunch of 1776 stuff at my tumblr.

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I'm back! Kind of!

Sun, 29 Jun 2014 16:17:51 GMT

So, hey, all!

I really want to come back to journaling, but I have no idea if the fact that my journals have been mostly empty for *cough* years means that most of you aren't here anymore.

If you're still reading, please just drop a comment? You don't have to be profound or anything - "Hey" will do. :)

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NOW AND AGAIN COMING TO DVD

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 23:08:35 GMT

Now and Again is coming to DVD this summer, according to one VERY large retailer! TVShowsonDVD has got the heads-up info.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW?

ETA: Pre-order at Amazon.

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So... yeah...

Sat, 11 Jan 2014 23:16:01 GMT

I'm not really *here* here, but I've been struggling with this stupid computer for two days and I just need someone to help me before I set my hair on fire.

Please help me burn video files from the computer to play on a standard DVD.

Take note - this is on a Mac. Any solutions for Windows won’t help me.

What I want to do:

Burn a video file to a DVD-R so that it is playable on a plain old standard DVD player.

What I have:

Three .mp4 files, around 600 MB each, and three .mkv files, around 1.7 GB each

A MACINTOSH COMPUTER (MacBook Pro with SuperDrive)

OS X Mavericks 10.9.1

Handbrake 0.9.9
FfmpegX 0.0.9y-L r2
MPEG Streamclip 1.9.3b8 beta
QuickTime Player 10.3
VLC 2.1.2
iMovie 10.0.1
iDVD 7.1.2
Burn 2.5.1
Toast Titanium 10.0

What I DON’T have:

money to buy any other software.

The problem:

While I have managed to burn two playable DVDs from one of the .mp4s (once with Burn and once with Toast), the video, which is widescreen format, ends up in 4:3 on the DVD, and I don’t know why.

When I tried to convert an .mp4 file to “DVD” using FfmpegX, I let the conversion run overnight, and it was only 33% finished by morning.

What am I doing wrong? Does anyone have a simple solution?

Um... hi!

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Les Miserables

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 00:21:56 GMT

"The first-ever screening of Tom Hooper's Les Misérables received a rapturous standing ovation on Friday afternoon in New York."—Huffington Post

"Each musical number was followed by raucous applause with the principal cast taking the stage to a standing ovation at the end of the film."—Collider

"Twitter proclaimed rapturous, ecstatic acclaim for Les Misérables. Apparently the crowd went nuts, on their feet, in tears."—Awards Daily

"Les Mis brings screening audience to tears and becomes instant Oscar contender."—The Examiner

"Judging from a raucously well-received New York screening of Les Misérables on Friday afternooon, the most exciting aspect of the 2013 Oscar race will be a contest between the precision of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln and the passion of Tom Hooper's epic musical.... Hugh Jackman, who anchors the film as the ex-con Jean Valjean, and [Anne] Hathaway, who plays the doomed grisette Fantine, are shoo-ins for Best Actor and Supporting Actress nominations."—Movieline

****************************

Official Site

Official teaser trailer

Official international trailer

Hooper made the decision to record the entire thing "live"—the actors sang while filming, rather than recording songs beforehand, and then lip-syncing on set.

Behind-the-scenes featurette: the actors talk about singing live while filming, and how it can make an enormous difference in a performance.

****************************

I saw Les Misérables with Colm Wilkinson, both in the West End and on Broadway, in my teens. I also saw Phantom of the Opera with Michael Crawford, both in the West End and on Broadway. If you'd asked me then which movie I'd have been more excited for, it would have been Phantom, without question. When they finally made Phantom into a movie (I was in my mid-thirties), the trailer turned me off. I thought "Wow, that's gonna suck." And I wasn't wrong.

This?

It doesn't premiere here for 30 days yet.

I'm already in line, motherfuckers. I'm already in line.

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Time, Amok

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 17:53:56 GMT

“The first Star Trek episode aired closer in time to the ratification of the 19th Amendment—guaranteeing women in the US the right to vote—than to today.” (xkcd)

Fuck you, space-time continuum. Stop messing with my head.

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I CAN'T WITH WHITE COLLAR WHAT IS THIS

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 02:52:00 GMT

DEAR WHITE COLLAR YOU ARE DRUNK

YOU ARE WRITING NC-17 FANFICTION OF YOURSELF

NOT THAT THIS IS PARTICULARLY NEW

BUT THIS IS A LEVEL I DID NOT EXPECT

WHAT IS THIS I DON’T EVEN

ELIZABETH I LOVE YOU

THIS SHOW IS SO FUCKING DRUNK RIGHT NOW

AND THEN AFTER NEAL TOOK THAT SIP OF WINE EVERYONE HAD SEX WITH EVERYONE

I EXPECT TO SEE THOSE STORIES PRONTO

LET'S GO FANDOM

ALL OF THE WRITERS WERE DRUNK WEREN’T THEY

ALL OF THE WRITERS

ALL OF THEM

ALL

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Dear Breaking Bad:

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 04:13:52 GMT

No.

Sincerely,
Me.

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My love for Hugh Bonneville knows no bounds

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 22:12:56 GMT

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I'd get a really good Data plan, too

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 19:27:50 GMT

I want an iPhone, a lot, and don't/can't have one right now, but omg once I get one, I am so going to do this:

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What's the best way to advertise/sell a whole bunch of books, CDs, and DVDs?

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 23:08:45 GMT

My friends J & P are downsizing from a very large house, and they've packed up over two decades of books, CDs, and DVDs to sell. Since they're ridiculously busy, they've made me a kind of estate agent: my job is to sell all this stuff, and then give them the cash (though I get a cut for doing the work, which is awesome). There's a wide range of quality and value -- some of the DVD cases are kind of battered; others are still sealed in the original plastic. Some of the books are ratty paperbacks; some are first-edition hardcovers.

My current plan is to build an Excel workbook that I can use to keep track of of everything that will be available, along with ISBN numbers for the books, release dates for the DVDs (and notes if it's a special edition, box set, blah blah), among other things. Then online research into fair prices for each of the items so that I know what to advertise as price (or what to expect from auction).

The problem is that there are so many options for how to sell this kind of stuff, and I'm at a bit of a loss to choose the best way (or ways) to do this. There's craigslist, ebay, and amazon, plus advertising the stuff on my dreamwidth, livejournal, and tumblr accounts (and then putting a link to those announcements on twitter). There are probably more I'm not thinking of, or don't even know about.

I have never sold anything on ebay, so my lack of familiarity with it is an automatic barrier to doing this easily, but if it's the best option for some of the items, I should probably look into it. But my understanding is that there are all kinds of fees and other details that make it sound like it's more trouble than it would be worth.

MY QUESTION:

Those of you who have done things like this--what do you suggest? What kind of success have you had in the past with the aforementioned venues for selling used stuff? What kind of bad experiences have you had? Do you have other ideas for me?

(Obviously I'll be making the Excel workbook available for download once it's finished for perusal by anyone who might be interested, so watch this space....)

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"Don’t underestimate how much antagonism there is toward women."

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 15:26:53 GMT

In memory of Nora Ephron, here is a selection from her commencement speech to Wellesley's class of 1996. Take note of how what women in America were up against sixteen years ago was merely an appetizer for how bad it is now.

I’m very conscious of how easy it is to let people down on a day like this, because I remember my own graduation from Wellesley very, very well, I am sorry to say. The speaker was Santha Rama Rau who was a woman writer, and I was going to be a woman writer. And in fact, I had spent four years at Wellesley going to lectures by women writers hoping that I would be the beneficiary of some terrific secret — which I never was. And now here I was at graduation, under these very trees, absolutely terrified. Something was over. Something safe and protected. And something else was about to begin. I was heading off to New York and I was sure that I would live there forever and never meet anyone and end up dying one of those New York deaths where no one even notices you’re missing until the smell drifts into the hallway weeks later. And I sat here thinking, “O.K., Santha, this is my last chance for a really terrific secret, lay it on me,” and she spoke about the need to place friendship over love of country, which I must tell you had never crossed my mind one way or the other.

… My class went to college in the era when you got a masters degrees in teaching because it was “something to fall back on” in the worst case scenario, the worst case scenario being that no one married you and you actually had to go to work. As this same classmate said at our reunion, “Our education was a dress rehearsal for a life we never led.” Isn’t that the saddest line? We weren’t meant to have futures, we were meant to marry them. ( continued.... )

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For sale: All of Farscape on DVD plus The Peacekeeper Wars

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 15:17:09 GMT

PACKED with commentaries, documentaries, deleted scenes, blooper reels, and other special features, this is the complete series plus the final movie miniseries. It's all original packaging and includes everything that was originally inside the DVD cases--in other words, they're in the same condition that they would be if you bought them in a store or ordered them from Amazon.

$55 plus shipping!

If you're interested, drop me a line at tzikeh ! thechicagoloop ? net.

SOLD!

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Matt Bomer in "Magic Mike"

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 00:24:53 GMT

So, have you guys seen any of the gifs folks have made from scenes in the trailers?

( HELLOOOOOOOO, MATT! )

Well. This will be... something.

To paraphrase Dan Rydell, it's hard not to notice that the man's body was put together by a technichian very close to God.

o.O

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Going against God's will -- it isn't just for gay people anymore!

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 19:40:37 GMT

NJ Doctor Would Reportedly Rather Let Patient Die Than Treat Him For ‘Gay Disease’

New Jersey doctor refuses to treat gay patient for HIV, says “This is what he gets for going against God’s will”

...

Doc, while you are a religious person, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that you haven’t bothered to read Your Rulebook. I’m not a religious person, but it just so happens that I’ve read it, cover to cover, and more than once.

If it turns out that you’re right about The Contents of Your Rulebook (that you probably haven’t read), I fear you are going to be in for an epic shock when you find out what neighborhood you’re slated to spend eternity in after you die.

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GET IT FOR ME

Fri, 04 May 2012 21:05:02 GMT

OMG I don't care if it isn't yet available - I want it so badly.

<VerucaSalt>GIVE IT TO ME NOW</VerucaSalt>

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I thought we were friends, Fringe.

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 06:08:36 GMT

Why you gotta break my heart, Fringe?

Why you gotta do me this way?

Fuck you, Fringe.

Just... fuck you.

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Louis vs Rick: the story of a man who taught his cat to use instant messaging

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:54:02 GMT

1:45 PM

Louis: rick
Louis: rick
Louis: rick
Louis: rick

2:22 PM

Louis: rick

Rick: Sorry Lou I was away. It's chaos over here, so what do you need?

Louis: i need you to come home its thanksgiving

Rick: Yeah I'm sorry about that, it's a work crisis, I have to be here.

Louis: im having a crisis too

Rick: Seriously? I need you to be serious. What is it?

Louis: my bowl is full of cat food
Louis: my bowl is full of cat food on thanksgiving

Rick: I don't have time for this now, Lou. If I get out of here at a reasonable hour I'll pick up something special from the deli and you can have some.

Louis: ill believe that when i see it

3:01 PM

Louis: rick
Louis: rick
Louis: rick

Rick: WHAT

Louis: hey how do you make those big letters

Rick: Shift key.

Louis: shift wtf is shift

Rick: Look at the keyboard, one left and one right. You hold them down and push a letter and it makes it big.

Louis: AAAAAZ?"??"
Louis: the two at once thing isnt really working for me

Rick: Yeah. Well, there's the caps lock too.

Louis: whats that

Rick: Never mind. I have to go.

Louis: oh
Louis: OH
Louis: OH MY GOD

Rick: Christ.

Louis: RICK
Louis: RICK
Louis: RICK
Louis: RICK
Louis: RICK

Rick: WHAT

Louis: THIS IS AMAZING
Louis: WHY DIDNT YOU TELL ME THIS BEFORE

Rick: Well, it's not really.. I mean, you can use it for certain things, but usually people don't use it because it looks like yelling.

Louis: I KNOW ITS PERFECT
Louis: CAPS LOCK IS HOW I FEEL INSIDE RICK
Louis: ALL THE TIME

View other battles here.

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OH MY GOD TRAILER FOR THE NEWSROOM

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 02:12:37 GMT

You guys I am SO excited I can't even.

Aaron Sorkin I have missed your dialog on my tv SO MUH-HUH-HUCH. And you've always belonged on HBO.

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This is just more evidence to support my hypothesis that duh.

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:54:44 GMT

This card is on today's PostSecret blog.

Whoever you are… it doesn’t have to be a secret anymore.

We’re here for you.

You are not alone.

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how to convert fanfiction that lives on lj or dw into Kindle, Nook, and other e-reader formats

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 01:03:29 GMT

We all know that Archive of our Own can automatically convert any fanfiction hosted there into various different formats (mobi, epub, pdf, html). That is but one reason that AO3 is so freakin’ awesome.

Unfortunately, there is no such option for fanfiction that’s hosted at livejournal or dreamwidth.

However, there is an easy (and free!) method to do so at Instapaper!

First, go get a free account at Instapaper. You will automatically get a bookmark called “read later.” (I installed it on my toolbar and renamed it “saved to instapaper.”)

Now, the main purpose of Instapaper is simply to bookmark stuff you’ve found online that you really want to read, but don’t have the time or inclination once you first come across it. Clicking on the “read later” bookmark will save the article to your instapaper account. When you want to read it, go to your account and click it.

On your account page, to the right, you will see "FOLDERS." You want to create a folder named whatever the piece of fiction is named. (Actually you could name is FRED if you want, but whatever.) Move the piece of fanfiction to that folder. Then, open the folder, so that the only thing displayed in the main screen is that story.

Once you have the piece of fanfiction saved to the folder, go ahead and click the format you want to download it as (“Printable,” “Kindle,” or “ePub”), and blam: it downloads the story, in the chosen format, to your computer. Sync your ereader, and there it is. (Kindle 3 users can also have it emailed directly to their Kindle.) Once you’ve done that, click “archive” or “delete” on the article (piece of fanfiction), and you’re done.

But what if the story is multiple chapters in multiple entries?

No problem—it just takes a little longer.

Make a folder at Instapaper for the story, just like you would for a single-chapter story.

Go to each lj entry of the story, and save each one to your Instapaper account. Make sure you get them all.

Go to your Instapaper account.

There’s a “move” link under each saved entry. “Move” each part of the story to the folder you’ve created. This is the part where you want to be careful: you have to move the last chapter FIRST, then the second-to-last chapter, etc. This saves them the last chapter at the bottom, etc., and the first chapter will be at the top.

Select the folder. You should see all of the chapters listed.

Click on the format you want to download.

Done.

If this doesn't work for you (it's possible I've missed out a step just by dint of having done it so often that I haven't simplified it enough), let me know and I can walk you through it.

Enjoy!

(N.B.: This probably works at other fanfiction archives, but I haven’t personally tested it, so I can’t say for certain.)

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Lord of the Rings extended edition behind-the-scenes question

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 02:36:39 GMT

I distinctly remember Bernard Hill talking about how the armorers etched symbols and such on the *inside* of his breastplate--something that no one who went to the movie would see, but he would. I have looked through the "costume" behind the scenes thing, and the "WETA" behind the scenes thing on the appendices disks for Fellowship, and I can't imagine where else it might live.

Anyone out there have the super-geek mojo to remember where it is?

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