So I’m reading up on the wookiepedia because of course I am and apparently there are Star Wars books in which a HUMAN PERSON WOMAN marries Luke “Trash Fire Jesus” Skywalker and they have a HUMAN PERSON CHILD (named Ben because Skywalkers are terrible at feelings and I find that bit of continuity into TFA hilarious) and I stopped paying attention after that because her name is MARA JADE and she is a REDHEADED PIRATE/DARK FORCE ASSASSIN WHO IS WON OVER BY THE POWER OF LOVE? I THINK? OR SOMETHING? AND BECOMES A JEDI MASTER BEFORE/AFTER/DURING LUKE’S TRAGICOMICAL (I can only assume it’s tragicomical) ROMANCE OF HER WHICH PROBABLY CONSISTS OF BUILDING HER A HEART-SHAPED LIGHTSABER OR SOMETHING AND MAKING AWFUL “SEXY” REMARKS ABOUT HIS ROBOT HAND OR SOMETHING.
In short, she is the best and I am actively enraged that she isn’t in the new movie. Every and all fic that I write for this fandom will include her either as Luke’s exasperated ex or as a space pirate who seduces everybody and is amazing. And she’s played by Archie Panjabi. Fight me.
I have a combination of issues, and I've basically given up caring about pretending I don't. The funniest, to me, is that I need captions to watch TV or movie, and I do better with audiobooks than with print; I have to read movies and listen to books.
(My boyfriend and his friends thought it was a little weird a decade ago when DVDs started being a thing, and I always wanted to watch movies with captions on. Now they're old enough that they think captions are a fine idea.)
Them: *says a thing*
Me: What?
Them: *repeats*
Me: I didn’t catch that
Them: *repeats again*
Me: I’m really sorry, one more time?
Them: *repeats yet again*
Me: *pretends I have a clue what they said*
For some strange reason, I’ve found saying “Say that again” (as a statement, not a question) results in a deliberate pause and a re-wording of what was said, and that gets me through this thing most of the time.
I generally wind up just telling people I’m faintly hard of hearing (true), suffering through the jerk jokes everyone (literally 90% of everyone) makes, and then expecting them to remember and be a little louder around me.
So, here’s an (unabashedly business-related) question on auditory processing issues, if you (and anyone else who might want to chime in) don’t mind:
I
know audio drama can be really hard for folks with these issues: any thoughts on how to mitigate this? What ways can we make audio drama more
accessible for people who have auditory processing issues?
We’ve discussed releasing scripts with episodes–are there other things that you think might be helpful?
A couple of key issues:
Releasing scripts is a BIG help. If possible make sure that the biggest sound cues are also in there; sometimes I need help re-syncing and knowing when, for instance, the truck hits the wall or whatever can help.
My key issue is overlapping sounds/ background noise. If you’re going to have scene-setting noise, be it white noise, music, whatever, make sure it is MUCH quieter than the key dialogue. Even if the dialogue is supposed to be hard to hear in-universe (like say folks trapped in a storm shouting at one another) make sure it’s very easy to hear to the listener, and consider tapering off the sounds once established.
Different tones: It’s way easier to hear, for instance, deep voices on top of very light, high-pitched music. If you’re going to overlap things, I can play with the bass/treble mix to hear the necessary noises better.
Mix things that overlap so that the R/L balance is very different: If I can take out my right earbud and hear the voices a lot clearer, then add it back in when it’s easier to hear, that lets me sort things out as I need to.
Publish it if you do any of this stuff. Having an accessibility page would be awesome, and putting a note at the front/back of your podcast episodes so I know it’s there is even better.
Calvin entered his grandmother’s cottage, noting the impossible cleanliness where he’d expected dust, and smelling banana bread. A tiny man, covered with wiry hair, was in the kitchen peering back at him. The stories rushed into Calvin’s head – all of them now verified as true, and the name came with them (as if he had pronounced it only yesterday). “Eebs? Eebsstoolbobbinpanhamper?” he inquired softly (going slow with the name, remembering that the long form was created out of the Brownie’s favorite things). “I am Calvin. Calvinclarasonofson.” “Clara?” said the tiny man, hopeful. Calvin shook his head and looked sad. Eebs tilted his back as if to howl and sobs shook him. Calvin crossed the kitchen and gently hugged the little man, crying just a bit himself. “Eebs can stay?” Eebs eventually asked. “Yes, absolutely,” Calvin said. “This is home for both of us now.” And so a new story started, different but just as wonderful as the first, and the two bachelors kept kindly company in their retirement. Calvin knit Eebs a little sweater for that first Christmas and Eebs somehow got the New York Times delivered to the house (he was a magical being after all). They listened to music and dozed in front of the fire; they took tea and watched the storms come in and crash against the Welsh coast; they played cards and read the funnies (a very popular activity). After a time, Eebs added yet another name to his list and asked Calvin to call him “Hobbs”. This seemed inexplicably right somehow, and Hobbs it was from that time forward.
1. It is not actually an effective argument for dissuading homophobes or transphobes. Take a look at the developmental disability community for some examples of what oppressors do when we’re born this way.
2. It contradicts the idea of actively introspecting to discover your sexual orientation and/or gender identity, invalidating anyone who didn’t just know automatically.
3. It implies that our inability to change is the only good reason to accept us, and by extension implies that we ought to change if we could. Therefore, it actually reinforces that notion that there’s Something Wrong With Us, rather than challenging it.
4. It erases the experiences of people whose queer identities were developed through trauma, who were not in fact born this way.
Them: *says a thing*
Me: What?
Them: *repeats*
Me: I didn’t catch that
Them: *repeats again*
Me: I’m really sorry, one more time?
Them: *repeats yet again*
Me: *pretends I have a clue what they said*
For some strange reason, I’ve found saying “Say that again” (as a statement, not a question) results in a deliberate pause and a re-wording of what was said, and that gets me through this thing most of the time.
I generally wind up just telling people I’m faintly hard of hearing (true), suffering through the jerk jokes everyone (literally 90% of everyone) makes, and then expecting them to remember and be a little louder around me.
If I'd ever wondered what happened to all the people who lived in constant fear of the reds invading us when I was a kid...
What do you call it when a school district cancels classes because of angry calls and emails involving Islam? Apparently not terrorism, as long as the calls and emails are angry that students were exposed to Islam in a non-hateful way. That’s the conclusion we can draw from Augusta County, Virginia, where the inclusion in a world geography class of an Islamic statement of faith—used to discuss the artistic aspects of Arabic calligraphy and not translated into English—led to a forum describing the teaching as “indoctrination” into Islam, and:
Since then, the school system has received so many calls and emails that Sheriff Randall Fisher advised schools to close, the statement from the district said.
"The communications have significantly increased in volume [Thursday], and based on concerns regarding the tone and content of those communications, Sheriff Fisher and Dr. Bond mutually decided schools and school offices will be closed," the district said.
Oh, but hey, there were no specific threats, just … a general aura of “it would probably be good to close the schools just in case,” or something? Phew, I sure am glad it wasn’t terrorist threats closing a school district. That would be bad.
Virginia state standards call for students to learn about world religions, but when it comes to Islam, it seems that even learning about the artistic aspects and not having the religious content of calligraphy translated into English is off limits.
If any of you try to start shit about younger fans getting into Star Wars for the first time because of Ep7 because they’re lesser somehow for not being a lifelong expert on something from before they were fucking born
I am going to Imperial March my way over there and beat you up.
Just so we’re all clear on that. They’re kids. Most of them were born well after even Ep3. You should be glad that they’re learning about a classic for the first time, not threatened.
Protect young SW fans 2k15. Or I’ll fucking fight you irl.
My protection extends to all people who aren’t called “real” fans because they don’t fit x criteria. You liked a single episode of Clone Wars and want to call yourself a fan? Welcome. The Phantom Menace was your favorite film? Welcome. You love cute droids? Welcome.
You don’t need anyone’s approval to be in the Star Wars fandom. Anyone who says otherwise, let me at ‘em.
No gatekeeping Star Wars.
No gatekeeping Star Wars.
No gatekeeping Star Wars.
No gatekeeping Star Wars.
No gatekeeping Star Wars.
No gatekeeping Star Wars.
No gatekeeping Star Wars.
I will fucking fight you with knives.
As someone who has dealt with gatekeepers since they were a kid (yay being a girl) I totally have your back if you’re new to the fandom, or a casual fan.
I will beat a motherfucker down with a toy lightsaber if y'all need me too.
I have literally dealt with dudes gatekeeping Star Wars since 1977. Try it, do not.
I just look at this and all I can feel is that it’s going to lead me to some fiendishly difficult puzzle that will require 27 pages of notes, a detail from two universes ago, and my dad to solve.
It’s the type of speech that’ll inspire you to get up and start checking things off that long-neglected to-do list. It’s the type of speech that sounds like it belongs in a commercial for something ungodly expensive. It’s the type of speech that’ll make you want to be a better you.
It’s the type of speech that stresses the message that yes, sometimes things in life are stacked against you, but no, that doesn’t mean you’re doomed to failure. You, like Serena, can overcome.
every time this shows up on my dash, it has grown and gotten better and picked up new fandoms.
I feel like I’m watch a child grow up over here. (Ok, I feel like I’m watching SOMEONE ELSE’S child grow up, or I’m a parent who is just never ever around)
You know, MissMiss (may she rest in peace) used to do this, back when we first got her. Then we brought Super ButtButt into the house, and she found whole new ways to expend her aggression and nervous energy.
Over the course of three months, Elliot the cat made this box disappear… via lsq
Storks is an animated feature by directors Nicholas Stoller and Doug Sweetland about the company of storks that used to deliver human babies. Although the storks have given up baby delivery in favor of delivering packages, when a baby is accidentally produced it must be delivered by a young stork and human before their boss finds out.
Tuesday’s editorial page of the New York Times (December 15th) asked that we—please—not blame mental illness for gun violence in the country. The Times has been speaking rather forcefully on the subject of gun violence as of late, calling it a “moral outrage” and a “national disgrace” in a front-page editorial of the paper about two weeks ago … the first time the paper ran an editorial on its front page in 95 years.
The editorial noted that:
“Blaming mental health problems for gun violence in America gives the public the false impression that most people with mental illness are dangerous, when in fact a vast majority will never commit violence. Still, some legal changes should be made to reduce access to firearms among the small percentage of people with mental illness who are dangerous to themselves or others.”
The Times also referenced empirical studies which show that mass shootings are a small number of all shootings, and a very small percentage of people with mental illness committed homicide by gun.
While it’s great that the paper is speaking out on this issue (something many news organizations have woefully failed at), what the Times is not mentioning in its analysis is also very revealing: While those who have mental illness may not be behind the majority of mass shootings, they are certainly dying at the hands of police officers. Persons with mental illness are 16 times more likely to die by cops than by non-law enforcement personnel. Time magazine cites a study by the Treatment Advocacy Center that reports “a minimum of 1 in 4 fatal police encounters ends the life of an individual with severe mental illness.”
a while back, ghostbong bought a very cheap, very used Roomba from craigslist. ”so, you’re going to ‘hack’ this, right?” said the man at the parking lot rendezvous. but we just wanted a vacuum. since then, the addition of the word “robot” to our casual, every-day lexicon is continually jarring, as if even living in the future will give you future-shock.
doing maintenance on the robot. the robot is stuck on a cord. the robot ate a sock. the robot ran out of power before it got back to its charging station. the robot knocked something over. it doesn’t help that the Roomba programmers saw fit to outfit the little thing with a series of Artoo-like MIDI scales and honks, to convey the mood of its message: docking successfully produces a tiny fanfare, and getting its brushes jammed on a foreign object makes it cry out in sad distress. do i verbally reassure the robot when i pull a wad of cat hair and bread bag tabs out of its works and set it back down on the floor? you bet i do.
but the larger point is that it is now possible no for me to say (or type) out loud and without irony, sarcasm, or any kind of fictitiousness: “the robot knocked over the kitten’s water dish >:I “
the future is here, and it is me on my knees on the floor yanking hairballs out of a domestic droid while it softly boops at me
this may be my favorite post in the history of tumblr
I get really protective over Carrie Fisher because nerds will go on and on about how cool and great Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford still are, but they’ll always be like “Carrie Fisher sure didn’t age well huh” and it’s like you know what? fuck you. she aged beautifully. she’s amazing. she’s gorgeous. just because you can’t fantasize about her returning to the gross metal slave bikini doesn’t mean she isn’t exactly as incredible as her old cast mates
Carrie Fisher is a fucking gift to humanity who we don’t deserve, and if you don’t know that, you’re ignorant, or you can’t read, or both.
“I’m grounded in who I am, and I am a confident black man. A confident, Nigerian, black, chocolate man,” he said. “I’m proud of my heritage, and no man can take that away from me. I wasn’t raised to fear people with a difference of opinion. They are merely victims of a disease in their mind. To get into a serious dialogue with people who judge a person based on the melanin in their skin? They’re stupid, and I’m not going to lose sleep over people.”
“I just don’t get it. You guys got every single alien in this movie imaginable to man. With tentacles, five eyes. Aliens that, if they existed, we’d definitely have an issue,” he said. “We’d have to get them to the government and be, like, ‘What are you?’ Yet what you want to do is fixate on another human being’s color. You need to go back to school and unlearn what you have learned.”
