Revisiting TLJ Criticism

Patrick (H) Willems is a YouTuber who posts on movies (you've possibly seen his series on hypothetical films directed by incongruous filmmakers, such as, What if Wes Anderson Directed X-Men?) I posted a link to his Paddington review about a month ago, him making a video on why it's so great. He also loves The Last Jedi, and has posted a couple of videos about it, why that's great, and why people who dislike it are wrong.

Why are people so wrong all the time?

Down in the comments sections... hoo boy, well this was bound to get at least a little contentious... down in the comments sections they have other ideas. I can't just watch a film anymore; I also have to look it up and learn more about it, and well I guess YouTube comments sections are kind of the same way, for me to interface with this content.

A rough overview of the "anti-Patrick" camp comments is this: they say that when the videos are talking about negative criticism, he's attacking straw men; that he's taking for granted and dissecting the idea that TLJ isn't a bad "movie," just a bad "Star Wars movie." That the critics against the film (at least these ones) don't see TLJ as bad Star Wars films, just as bad films period. Which is a matter of opinion, as it always is, but, where in the world are they getting such notions? It's bizarre.

I'm genuinely trying to understand how people could hate The Last Jedi. 

At least they're just being wrong, instead of actively being terrible to people. There are worse things in the world to be, than wrong.

But seriously looking at the comments and suggestions as to why TLJ may have been a bad film, I'm getting, aside from "not understanding the characters" or whatever: it's tonally inconsistent. A lot of people didn't like the humor, or maybe they would have liked it, had not the humor been placed where it was.

I didn't get that one at all.

Are critic-y people and movie buffs such as I, just naturally more likely to be alright with  tonal whip-pans than mainstream audiences? Are people who don't watch that many films, or only watch mainstream faire, more sensitive to mood whiplash? Me, I love jarring tonal shifts. I watch a lot of Bollywood, and it happens there all the time, and you just learn to roll with it, and it makes the final product all the more epic in the long run. And so is my failure to see any mood whiplash in TLJ, even when specific examples are pointed out to me, a result of mood whiplash desensitization? And is that why I don't mind that? I don't know.

The other point, anyway. Maybe The Last Jedi doesn't understand its characters...? I'd have to rewatch The Force Awakens to see if the characterization was as thin there as I remember it being. I love that movie, of course, but I remember it being very much, not self-contained as far as characterization went, like say A New Hope was. I'd been going to do that today, actually, but instead I cultivated curated and annotated a selection of t.o.'d YouTube comments in an attempt to understand the viewpoint being portrayed therein. It's the good life.

View the curated list HERE.

+/- $1

I put a li'l bit of spare cash into my bank account, thinking that this subscription which I'd cancelled has its payment at the end of the period instead of the beginning, and the subscription costing exactly one more dollar than I'd had in my account. Only, the subscription didn't bill me, with today being the last day of it, so it looks like the payments are on the first day of the pay period and not the last- and thus I have the cost of that plus a dollar, in my bank account. Plus the other dollars I also put in just in case I was wrong about the "exactly a dollar" thing.

It's $3 credit toward a Kindle book anyway, so that extra dollar is, it's all exactly how much I'd thought it would be.

Pizlo Shouts Paradox

Mary Robinette Kowal hosts on her blog interviews with sff authors, consisting of one question: their favorite part in their latest work, and why. Lawrence M Schoen talks about his favorite part in The Moons of Barsk here; it is transcendently resplendently splendid.

http://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/my-favorite-bit-lawrence-m-schoen-talks-about-the-moons-of-barsk/

$4 Discounts and Littul Kittons

I learned so much today it's absolutely insane. Alright, I've got $4 in complimentary Amazon credit which I can use to purchase a book. I buy an ebook on Amazon, I get discounted $4, right? It goes away at the end of the month, so I've only got a few days to decide what I want to do with it. Obviously I want the best deal for myself, since the $4 only goes toward one purchase, so $4 and up is perfect; at the same time, I'm basically broke, so it shouldn't be more than that by, almost any degree of money. So I'm looking for a book of exactly $4, or $3.99 or something. Dead Alligator Lizard is $2.99, but I already own it. There's a book on my wishlist at $4.99, which, heck I'm probably going to do that.

But the next time I'm at a library I'm definitely checking out (because hypothetically I also have the ability to make checkouts from this library) at least one book by Cordwainer Smith; also, why have I not heard of this guy before? Alright, I've definitely heard of him, but, why is he not more famous? I don't know. Golden-age SFF tends to be undervalued anymore, is my best guess.

The gist of his work is, it's mostly all in this one shared setting, but spanning thousands of years, and not connected by a story arch or anything; everything just, happens to take place in the same universe. Just researching his stories though, it's the most crazy imaginative stuff I've read since Osamu Tezuka.

Like, who needs death lasers or nukes in your killsat when you can have genetically engineered bloodthirsty minks who have to be kept sedated otherwise they'll kill themselves and each other? There is absolutely no excuse or need to be cliche in science fiction.

But also, like his prose is supposed to be really interesting too, and the way he constructs his stories...

Overcookies

So during the day I have all these crazy thoughts but when it comes time to write anything- it's not that I can't remember them, they just don't seem worth talking about. I mean, Solo: A Star Wars Story really is my favorite Star Wars film outside of the original trilogy, and in real life I could rave for half an hour straight about how much I love it and the details why, but writing that down, that expends a lot of energy, and it's not as fun as like saying the words out loud for some reason.

Made cookies. Overcooked them. Overcookies! Made brownies instead.

I brought a desk in from the garage, into my room. There had been two beds, but the day before yesterday one got moved out (like I said with the sleeping in the corner.) Big empty space, time to put it to use.

Bed on the side with the window now. East-facing. Wake up in the morning, a couple hours earlier than I had been without it. It's good for me.

Little Dots

54, why 54...? 55 has such a better ring to it, or maybe wait ten days after that and it's still going on, you get 64 with is 2 to the sixth power, much more mathematically significant. Oh well. It was late and I needed a post I could knock out quickly. I went to bed very early last night. Not really bed so much as, curl up against the wall and happen to fall asleep.

More on that later.

Polka dots! Now You See It has a recent video on the symbolism of stripe patterns, their use in costume designs in film. They mention stripes as being ambiguous (which color is the foreground and which is the background?), and also attention-grabbing. Making stripes the stand-out-iest out of all the patterns.

But me, I like polka dots.

Why did I curl up against the wall? It's something I've always wanted to do, lose all motivation and lie down then and there, even though you happen to be in the middle of the street when you do so. Cry yourself to sleep. Or whatever. It felt decently good, but in a dangerous way. Do this any more, and it may become a habit.

But polka dots gave me life. I was held in the palm of polka dots, and nurtured in their heartbeat.

I have a bed. It has a mattress protector now, which is what it lacked last night, which is why I curled up against a corner instead. The bed sounds nice. Even though I can't literally hear it.

There were things I wanted to get done yesterday. Too many things. They swam around, threatening to drown me. So I decided to take a break from them. In a corner. In the dark. And I remembered a lyric. It's funny how some distance makes everything seem small. The fears that once controlled me can't get to me at all.

I should still do those things, but they're not as complex or as time-sensitive as I'd made them out to be.

And in church today, I lacked motivation for anything too. I was lifted up by polka dots. It's the little things that make life awesome.

Day 54 of the "Check Out My Sick Elephant" Crisis

Wondermark.com

This is (Not Quite) My Life Now

Actually using hashtags and stuff in my latest IG post I managed to double my followers (still not a very impressive number but it's a start,) and linking my sites from the post, well I haven't gotten any hits from that but you never know. Which means it's time to STEP IT UP DOO-DOO-DOO.

My Instagram posts seem to go up every Wednesday, based on the not-pattern (but still precedent) of my last two posts posted. I probably should (and definitely could) make that more regular, but I'M POSTING AT ALL AT LEAST. And Inktober coming up waka-waka-waka facilitate that especially now that I have ink (thanks, ma!); I know how to control lines with a paintbrush so using a nib pen should be the same basic principle, right? I guess I'll practice tomorrow.

And also find time for editing and posting a video. I'd meant to get a YouTube video up today, but it looks like it's maybe a tomorrow thing, which would make it look like it's a Saturday thing if I want to go the weekly route. The last time I posted on Pretzelize Me Cap'n! was two weeks ago, on Saturday; should I continue with that also in posting regularly there, which would make those Saturdays as well...? 

And I'm not sure about regularity in terms of facebook, but last I posted there was Wednesday as well, same day as Instagram. (I'd had such a lack of activity on that page that it actually unpublished from the web, and I had to republish it again. Some weird thing Facebook does to make sure people are regular and frequent with their engagement. Booting my FB page back up, due to mentioning it in the IG.) 

Not sure if I should stagger these out; I've read website articles on the best times to post for MAXIMUM ENGAGEMENT, but I can't remember a thing other than: hey you should post more.

Or how about this: I work hard at making my yaargh content as quality as possible, and then see into regularity.

Feeling Spoiled

My birthday and Christmas are kinda vaguely in-the-distance coming up, like two months from now is my birthday, and it's thus kinda vaguely time to start thinking about what I want. I love the two being so close together, meaning it's possible for the combining of gifts (I adore quality over quantity, as much as it may not seem it sometimes.) The camera a few years ago, that was the greatest, and I'm still getting much mileage out of that.

The real question is, since getting one huge gift over the two holidays would supplant any other huge gift (the camera was like the only thing I got Christmas of 2016,) what it is exactly that I want. My laptop 2.1 crashes at slight breezes, so Mom suggested a new one, but I've got my eye on a fisheye camera lens (this one) for my camera. (It's so beautiful I could cry.) 2.1 actually hasn't crashed in weeks, although the USB drives, indeed all input slots, remain finicky.

Guess it depends really on what sorts of laptops Mom has in mind; I'd meant to ask her about that. If there are any specific models for me to choose the lens over, because seriously I am gunning for that lens, then we would know exactly which laptops are worse than awesome lenses.

Anyone Remember This?

Anyone remember this?

https://dielikeadisneyvillain.blogspot.com/2017/09/anyone-remember-these.html

I'm adding one to the list; we've figured out a couple of them from that list already so good job there. #4 is Star Kid, which came out in 1997 and was released on video in 1998. And I discovered #5 today- it's You Wish, and it ran for one season back 1997-1998 on ABC's TGIF block. Knowing this, I'm guessing that the film I'm thinking of thus miiight be from 1997 or 1998, but of course there's no guarantee. 

I'm asking about it on the You Know That Show...? forums at TV Tropes as well, but I haven't gotten any nibbles yet. Maybe a family member would have more information.

Family film, live action. It’s about, or at least features, a girl, 12ish, whose father is a comic book artist. There’s a scene at a birthday(?) party, at a pool, and there’s a live 60s-esque band who’ve been hired to perform, singing lyrics along the following lines: “ooh, she’s daddy’s little girl” (trying to search these lyrics only turns up an unrelated song.) The other kids there are making fun of the girl because of something in the latest issue of her father’s comic book. It’s a vaguely TMNT-esque publication, with anthropomorphic animals as the characters, and the Master Splinter-type character has his adopted-daughter-type figure start wearing a training bra now that she’s growing up; all the girl’s friends recognize this as being a thinly veiled stand-in for the girl’s own blossoming into womanhood and tease her for this.

BICHOK

I would have gone to bed five hours ago already had I a post up; in many instances it's what keeps me awake. I bide my time hoping for an idea to come; sometimes it does but the cost is too great for the benefit. The benefit today of waiting till now is to realize, oh silly me, of course no ideas are going to start to flow with my hands off of the keyboard; it's only when I start writing generally in these circumstances that anything juicy occurs to me and I'm able to do a post.

NaNoWriMo in a couple of months like I said- if I'm doing Moone book 2, it's going to be discovery written rather than outlined, which has always kind of been the plan I guess. I do have a lot of ideas for it, but not really an idea of how they'll fit together. We'll see. There's going to be a lot of sex, like how gods reproduce is an important plot element and everything; I self-censored a lot of my more romantic elements out of the public draft of the first book, but if I do that here there simply won't be a book. So I don't know, it's pretty weird. That's the reason my POPULAR CULTURE machine of death Halloween story is posted as a page on the blog instead of in the body of a post, because of the saucier elements in that.

Musical Notation (Symbolic)

Heck, Inktober starts in two weeks, and NaNoWriMo after that. And my spooky short story the day before that of course. I'll think of something.

Today didn't really go as planned, but it was a good one nonetheless. A great one. I didn't think about killing myself today, and that like never happens (it's a disruptive thought pattern; I can't control it, but today was good enough that nothing was there to trigger it in the first place.) And I look and feel, really good right now.

(Not planning on killing myself but it's alright if you're freaking out and want to talk with me about it or whatever- it's something we don't talk about enough as a society, something we naturally shy away from. I'm just bringing it up here, really casually. Because that's the way the thoughts are in my head, hey you know what's a good idea suicide! That devil, sure is a wacky one...)

As long as I'm thinking about the subject of my own mortality, if I do die randomly sometime soon, I don't really have regrets? I talk about it a lot, how there are all these art projects I want to get done but which I never work up the motivation to start; I've got plans for them written out at least, as much of them as I've got figured out so far, so I figure that somebody else can execute those concepts if I'm unable to complete them in my lifetime. My failure to (be able to) execute plans on my own, that's just some part of God's plan for me for some reason; I feel satisfied that, as far as it's formed so far, my music is outside of me.

Maybe I'm unmotivated to do the things I want to, because they already exist, at least in concept form? The mystery continues...

Executive Malfunction

It wasn't a book, it was actually a symposium- trying to track down more information about it I'm hitting a brick wall; I don't even know what this McDougall guy's first name is. All I've got is what Wikipedia tells me. Which information, seems legit, but there could be honking gaps I don't know about, all that. All that I have is a list of what the problems are, with no specific strategies to combat any given deficit. Bleeehhh.

There are other resources online, of course; and I've already looked into in-print resources, at the district library back in Rexburg. The problem with all of these is, these are all from an educator's perspective, telling teachers how to combat executive functioning problems in students. I already know how to learn, plus I'm already graduated, plus, well the most important plus so you may as well call it a multiply by instead, I'm not a teacher I'm myself, I started this journey specifically because of that. I don't need to know how to combat learning difficulties in students, I need to know how to combat basic life skill difficulties in myself.

Thinking about the problem academically, though, just right now hands-off ivory tower armchair, I can think of a few rudimentary tools. Writing down what needs to be done, breaking it into smaller chunks, organizing those chunks into categories based on difficulty level and degree of importance/urgency (that's the good old, Eisenhower Matrix,) sorting those tasks into an order based on those categories, scheduling out those sorted tasks, going through the schedule and leaving some room for flexibility in case unexpected difficulties arrive. It sounds so easy in theory. In practice, for whatever reason, there's still this vast disconnect.

I thought in the beginning that completing a blogpost a day would imbue in me some executive function skillset and the ability to operate within deadlines and frameworks, and... well, it's given me those things, but only specifically within the context of, being able to complete a blogpost a day. I'm not sure if it's improved my writing skills or journalism skills any. I seem to have been good at that from the beginning.

So it seems that I yet lack (and may always be in want for) self-motivation. 

But I know that getting forced to do something compels me to do it. 

It's back to the SMART goals then, which I never really excelled at but which had good some good ideas still. I've read that telling people your goals may in some cases make you less likely to complete a task, for some stupid reason, (I don't even care enough to look that up,) but which IIRC would have something to do with it taking away your intrinsic motivation. There's this whole fascinating intrinsic-vs-extrinsic motivation debate, where if you offer a reward to someone to complete a task they'll complete the task specifically for that reward and thus find no intrinsic motivators to do so (take away their reward before they're finished, they won't finish the task because why bother.) But I don't really have intrinsic motivation for, well tasks certainly. Even things I want to get done and want to do, I won't do, because it's all just by myself and is all thus arbitrary.

Which means that telling people my goals would maybe actually work or something.

Not sure yet how to use this information (maybe in conjunction with blogging, which I'm actually already good at?), nor am I sure how to end this post today, but...

TRIPOD TOO HECK

Executive Dysfunction

Somebody force me to do something. Please. I don't understand "self-motivated" people at all. Is self motivation an affect of executive function? 

I'm still capable of, y'know, doing stuff. Like just now I went and researched executive functioning skillsets. Didn't, plan on it beforehand or anything. It was spontaneous. Obviously.

This McDougall guy who wrote a book (and like a legit one too not like one of those people who write natural herbal remedy books or whatever) divides executive function into two broad domains (his book focuses on executive function in the classroom but that's only inappropriate in the context of the specific illustrations he gives to demonstrate his categories, and not in the constructs making up executive function itself, dawg): self-regulatory skills and goal-oriented skills. Each of those is broken down into sub-categories:

Self-Regulatory

• perception
• modulation
• sustained attention
• flexibility
• working memory
• response inhibition
• emotional regulation

Goal-Oriented

• planning
• organization
• time management
• self-monitoring

Wikipedia is telling me that individuals with autism "commonly show impairment in three main areas of executive functioning," and lists those as flexibility, planning, and, fluency which-isn't-one-McDougall-has-but-that's-fine-because-my-fluency-is-great,-thank-you-very-much. (Best fluency I know! Many doctors agree.) My flexibility is also, like, the bomb, but we hit a wall when we come to planning. And, yeah, the entirety of the goal-oriented skillset. 

It's not only the goal-oriented ones, but it is mostly those ones. Out of the self-regulatory Pokémon, the two I want catching are, 1) depending on the task, sustained attention (probably any flagging focus would be due to, goal oriented stuff, like shifting from one mini-task to another and being unsure of the demands and thus fatiguing,) and 2) modulation. GOOD GLORY do I lack modulation. That's the, awareness of effort required to complete a task. Guess it's just a perfectionist streak or, well I actually talked about this just a few cycles ago. Something about taking up as much time as possible, polishing and polishing until the very very end? Though most of that polishing, based on my record of class assignments' work schedules, actually being fundamental like construction and not spitshine at all.

Which would have to do with, time management and stuff, solidly a goal-oriented skill. Don't think I have poor judgement in effort required to complete a task, actually, so much as, the amount of time required to complete it. So, yeah, I guess 100% of my executive function problems do stem from, the goal-oriented skills side of it; nice to know.

It's weird thinking that there are people out there who can just... manage their time. Just like, as a skill they've got, whether it's one that comes naturally to them or not. People out there who can plan. Or organize. Or self-monitor (actually that one I don't have that much of a problem with.) Feels like a prison, without it.

But, you know. Spontaneity can be a lifeskill too. 

HECKING LAV MIC

Well There's Your Problem. Solution, Though, Search Me...

I've figured it out, why everything seems to go so slowly with me. If I work on any task for greater than, some arbitrarily short period, it fills me with enough anxiety that I need to take a break, generally by switching to another task. The amount of time it takes to get into the swing of the new task is overtaken by the amount of time I can successfully give unmonitored undivided attention to said new task, and I need to quit before I even really begin.

So that's no good eh.

(Things would be a whole lot easier if I didn't cringe just thinking about the word) Brandbuilding

Okay but really, fiction is so much easier, because if I get a good story idea or anything, I'd understand pretty easily which if any of my ongoing projects it would fit the best into, as a visual beat or character motivation or whatever- and if not, I can still write that sucker down and save it for later. Even easier. 

But social media, I don't know- is there anything intrinsic, like, alright this would be a Facebook announcement, this would be an Instagram post, etc.? Thinking about it it maps pretty cleanly, visual things would be posted onto IG, announcements etc would go onto FB, and audio-visual stuff going onto YouTube... but that's on paper; it doesn't map nearly so cleanly in my head. 

Thinking about studying the way other people do it; some of my favorite content creators are on more than one platform, which though not surprising is still baffling how they'd be able to do that. Maybe it's exactly the things I described with the way things map above? Maybe it's just a bunch of cross-platform pollination? Maybe it's this whole horizon that I can't imagine but would comprehend intrinsically if only I saw it in motion? 

I don't know. Which is obviously why I'm gumming about it here. Doing anything else beyond that- well, that sounds suspiciously like work to me. This really does have the potential to be so easy and natural. I've got the ideas in place. It's only the implementation of the framework, now...

Social Media Means and Ends

Painted and posted a new Instagram post today; it's got one "like" which is quite nearly 100% of my followers, so I'd classify it as an unmitigated success. I've spent most of the evening braindumping all the ideas I've got for YouTube content out onto (virtual) paper; meanwhile I'm not sure how I feel about that as Lindsey Ellis's latest video is a deconstruction of YouTube as a, man I don't even know, but it was heady, and it had an interview with John Green in it. 

I don't think I want to be a "YouTuber" so much as I just see it as a means to an end, producing/ shooting/ editing content so that I'm comfortable with any given task associated therewith.

Same thing with Instagram, I suppose. An excuse to rip out the art ripened on my interior walls, instead of fretting over whether they could possibly be yet riper. As far as that goes, I should start thinking about launching that webcomic I've had brewing in me, though the problems with yet doing so are enough to base an entire post around them. I've got the worldbuilding in place, but not much story. For one. And for two, there are a heckuva lot of locations, within that worldbuilding, and cityscapes aren't my strongest subject artistically.

So anyway my Adobe payment went through yesterday, with my subscription back on track. It was... small. Very small. I'm just going to assume that it was intended to be that way, and not some sort of mixup.

Quem Canta Seus Males Espanta

Sing, the movie, its subtitle in Brazil is a Portuguese saying, Those Who Sing Scare Away Their Demons. Something like that. Which is just perfect, because the climax of the film is Meena abandoning her fears and opening herself up via her voice. Like Buster Moon says to her, "just sing."

Every day I wake up planning to have it be super productive or whatever, and every day I just sort of goof off all day, like, that's not productive. BUT SERIOUSLY THE NEW BUSAN MAP IN OVERWATCH I SWEAR I'VE SEEN IT BEFORE LIKE WAS IT IN THE BETA OR SOMETHING THIS IS DRIVING ME NUTS.

Maybe they just ripped off a map from BattleBorn; nobody would ever know. Though BattleBorn doesn't take place on Earth of course.

I hold back like, man that's gonna take forever, but if I give myself just the slightest push, whatever it is to do just takes, like, fifteen minutes. Or feels that short, getting all up In The Zone.

Blog/Ideas/Vids/Jot

At World's End, I've said before, is just a failed The Force Awakens. This could be a YouTube video essay or something. It should be a YouTube video essay or something. So never mind what I was about to say; I'mma talk about this instead.

So with the Adobe sub going forward (this could/should be a post on Pretzelize Me, Cap'n!, but whatever) though without any real excuse not to up till this time, I'mma gonna do it, I'mma gonna produce videos some more. Heck, I feel successful with only four subscribers. Heck.

I'm pretty good lately about jotting down ideas as they come to me, but that needs to improve when it comes to, video ideas coming to me. I'm not doing that as much as I should. They feel so fresh and obvious when they arrive, like a dream you just know you're going to remember so you never write it down and thus forget.

The Incredible Hulk feels like a failure as an MCU film because it's structured like a DCEU film. There's another one. I'm, writing these ideas down, at least.

Video essays (and, hey why am I writing this here, it deals with my Pretzel identity, it could go on Pretzelize Me, Cap'n!, but then again with all these ideas for videos I should do I'm writing down, I wrote down https://dielikeadisneyvillain.blogspot.com/2018/08/think-i-should-post-on-my-graphic.html and I still haven't done that;) what was I saying, something about video essays? It's a good fit for the platform, so those are popular, maybe too popular but whatever; that's like saying slide shows are too popular on that one platform dedicated to sharing slide shows.

Hats! Festival of hats! 

(That's not an idea for a video, that's me just writing something random so that this post doesn't get too boring, with me just talking about the same thing for paragraphs on end.)

A lot of the ideas for video essays are similar to themes in films I'm developing, though, and so there's this reluctance there because I don't want to be seen as a YouTuber who then started making movies. So???

Should I go through with that anyway? Leave your response in the comments; also be sure to like, subscribe, and share.

(nailed it)

What's the Deal with Dagon?

No incredible bouts of self-discovery today, sorry. I did have my mind eased though; I'll put the whole quote up when I can be bothered to (it's 10:00 at night, and while that's not usually that late, it's very late for the sabbath.) 

Artistic creation is a mode of worship, but I'm always off somewhere misinterpreting the second commandment. I still feel like I may be too occupied with media (and whether other people may be even more occupied is no concern of mine; "you do you" is correct in that regard at least) but there's no intrinsic theologically problematic issue in being artistic. 

https://www.lds.org/new-era/1974/08/q-and-a-questions-and-answers/are-certain-forms-of-creative-art-discouraged-in-the-church?lang=eng#