The Week So Far
- Finished catching up on Welcome to Night Vale. WHAT A GOOD PODCAST. Its existence fills me with delight. <3 The existence of its fanbase is also rather remarkable and a really interesting fandom phenomenon; this article does a pretty good job discussing this, and serves as a casual introduction to the podcast in general.
Personally, I think they underestimate the importance of actually having a queer protagonist in a normalised same-sex relationship; while they touch upon it, they don't link this to Night Vale's sudden popularity on Tumblr. Surely there's genre appeal there, but I don't think it's a coincidence that the fandom boom happened just around the time the relationship became canon. And I don't mean this in a condescending "fandom luvs teh ghey" way; many are just genuinely delighted to see a gay relationship being portrayed as normal.
Also, fandom loves slash.
- Downloaded a whole bunch of books from Gutenberg and other sites. Because it's not like I don't have enough books to read already. Also listened to more audio plays.
- It rained yesterday, so instead of sitting outside reading/listening to audio plays I huddled up inside and watched a bunch of documentary films, courtesy of topdocumentaryfilms.com (as all links lead to YouTube or Vimeo, everything is available for free).
I'm generally rather paranoid about watching documentaries, because the vast majority of them are made for casual viewers and tend to be extremely sensationalist and/or not present a layered enough view of the subject they're presenting. When watching documentaries, I am haunted by the fear of being misinformed; especially since I'm always tempted to watch documentaries about things I know very little about (documentaries are the worst gateway drug of knowledge).
Égalite For All, about Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution. This is one event in history I knew absolutely nothing about, but found really interesting; although I think there's a lot of room for bias, looking at the person it focuses heavily on (Louverture), the people interviewed and the language used, the documentary nicely portrays how complicated the revolution was. It doesn't pretend to teach everything there is to know.
The Dark Lords of Hattusha is a BBC dramadocumentary about the Hittites. As such it's largely sensationalist drivel, but if you can ignore the rhetoric (and the complete inability to put Hittite culture in the context of other semitic cultures of this period) it actually gets most of its facts right as far as I can tell. Also it's SO HARD TO FIND COUMENTARIES ABOUT THE HITTITES. I think this is the only one.
Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity actually watched this with my sister on her request. This one's pretty old (produced in 1999) and something of a classic in this field now, I suspect, but still relevant; it's only the pop cultural illustrations that have dated. But I don't think it brought up much I didn't already know, and it has a major flaw in that while it acknowledges violence against women and queer individuals it doesn't point out the connections between ideals of masculinity, homophobia and the deeply ingrained misogyny in our society.
- Baked! Both yesterday and today, but yesterday I forgot to take photos.
I have no idea what to call them in English tbh. That's lingonberry jam btw, which is notorious for being SOUR AND NOT LIKE JAM AT ALL. Non-Scandinavian people seem to work under the misconception that Swedes eat lingonberry jam like normal jam, which-- no. You don't want to do that. Lingonberry jam goes well with potatoes, meat balls, pork; food in general rather than desserts.
Of course there are exceptions. This recipe is one, which is why I wanted to try it.
The finished product (plus two specimens of the ones I baked yesterday). Very easy to make; three layers consisting of batter, jam and topping (oatmeal, sugar and butter) which actually works. The lingonberry jam is still tart, but nicely balanced.
This entry was originally posted at http://regndoft.dreamwidth.org/206209.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Personally, I think they underestimate the importance of actually having a queer protagonist in a normalised same-sex relationship; while they touch upon it, they don't link this to Night Vale's sudden popularity on Tumblr. Surely there's genre appeal there, but I don't think it's a coincidence that the fandom boom happened just around the time the relationship became canon. And I don't mean this in a condescending "fandom luvs teh ghey" way; many are just genuinely delighted to see a gay relationship being portrayed as normal.
Also, fandom loves slash.
- Downloaded a whole bunch of books from Gutenberg and other sites. Because it's not like I don't have enough books to read already. Also listened to more audio plays.
- It rained yesterday, so instead of sitting outside reading/listening to audio plays I huddled up inside and watched a bunch of documentary films, courtesy of topdocumentaryfilms.com (as all links lead to YouTube or Vimeo, everything is available for free).
I'm generally rather paranoid about watching documentaries, because the vast majority of them are made for casual viewers and tend to be extremely sensationalist and/or not present a layered enough view of the subject they're presenting. When watching documentaries, I am haunted by the fear of being misinformed; especially since I'm always tempted to watch documentaries about things I know very little about (documentaries are the worst gateway drug of knowledge).
Égalite For All, about Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution. This is one event in history I knew absolutely nothing about, but found really interesting; although I think there's a lot of room for bias, looking at the person it focuses heavily on (Louverture), the people interviewed and the language used, the documentary nicely portrays how complicated the revolution was. It doesn't pretend to teach everything there is to know.
The Dark Lords of Hattusha is a BBC dramadocumentary about the Hittites. As such it's largely sensationalist drivel, but if you can ignore the rhetoric (and the complete inability to put Hittite culture in the context of other semitic cultures of this period) it actually gets most of its facts right as far as I can tell. Also it's SO HARD TO FIND COUMENTARIES ABOUT THE HITTITES. I think this is the only one.
Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity actually watched this with my sister on her request. This one's pretty old (produced in 1999) and something of a classic in this field now, I suspect, but still relevant; it's only the pop cultural illustrations that have dated. But I don't think it brought up much I didn't already know, and it has a major flaw in that while it acknowledges violence against women and queer individuals it doesn't point out the connections between ideals of masculinity, homophobia and the deeply ingrained misogyny in our society.
- Baked! Both yesterday and today, but yesterday I forgot to take photos.
I have no idea what to call them in English tbh. That's lingonberry jam btw, which is notorious for being SOUR AND NOT LIKE JAM AT ALL. Non-Scandinavian people seem to work under the misconception that Swedes eat lingonberry jam like normal jam, which-- no. You don't want to do that. Lingonberry jam goes well with potatoes, meat balls, pork; food in general rather than desserts.
Of course there are exceptions. This recipe is one, which is why I wanted to try it.
The finished product (plus two specimens of the ones I baked yesterday). Very easy to make; three layers consisting of batter, jam and topping (oatmeal, sugar and butter) which actually works. The lingonberry jam is still tart, but nicely balanced.
This entry was originally posted at http://regndoft.dreamwidth.org/206209.html. Please comment there using OpenID.