CROWD-PLEASINGLY LUKEWARM TAKES
Pitch: a post-colonial #AntiquesRoadshow where second and third generations come and give the valuations their ancestors gave to the things (allegedly) left behind. Or, y’know, experts who just contextualise inheritance & ownership in Britain a bit more.
The #NotAGimmick comments seems to reflect the problem with mere representation in commercial media. It’s fine to have, say, a South Asian Mary Poppins, as long as she’d never be presented as someone brought in from a colonised India, let alone raise an eyebrow at the metropole’s habits.
Millennials like cats for a simple reason: in them, we see creatures that could be independent, and yet continually choose to be dependent on a strange and arbitrary system beyond their understanding so long as it continues to provide food and shelter more easily than the alternative.
My dear people who fill out ‘Viking’, ‘Human’, and other such hilarious things on Diversity Monitoring forms: not only are you being an unethical prat, but you are also making whoever processes the form’s life slightly harder. Please stop.
Further to the above, if you choose to use the ‘gender’ question as an opportunity for some casual transphobia, please remember that it’s quite easy to work out who did that in a small pool of respondents.
Monarchists: the monarchy is the neutral upholder of British values like free speech, impartial from birth and avoiding politics and lobbying.
Means of legitimisation have always varied, of course.
What good to the industrial baron is the First of May?
Christmas: the only time you can hum the Labour party anthem without alerting your boss.
NERD STUFF
This Tweet has been haunting my brain. If any party was going to do this, I’d have assumed it’d be the one singing about Dungeons Dark And Gallows Grim…
Just read a bit of early modern alchemical writing that described the foundational elements as sulphur, mercury, and salt. Anyone want to do a #DnD hack based on this? Specifically, does anyone want to give me an excuse to cast ‘saltball’?
ESSAY TITLES
Do threads of “Things You Need To Know About X” perpetuate Enlightenment values of knowledge-as-salvation? This may not be a problem, but compassion in ignorance may do more.
Fantasy OC artwork as an imagined past - is it fetishising Old Masters/ideologies of art, or reclaiming them? (e.g. why so few pieces in other schools of art - Luscombe, cubism, various indigenous peoples’?)
Is the present questioning of gender roles tied to the failure of current economic structures that were foundational to those roles? e.g. ‘breadwinner’, ‘homemaker’, ‘home is *his* castle’, ‘beautiful & finely [i.e. expensively] dressed’? Discuss.
Most large organisations (e.g. opera companies) have anti-bribery policies. These ban taking money to influence decisions if it might look like impropriety. Yet if you’re rich enough, your donation can add a show to the programming and bump another show. Which seems… odd.
Is there something gendered in plothole/lorehole-focused critique? Tolkeinesque ‘scientific’ (manly, academic) files of lore vs. Le Guin ‘holes in the elbows’ (womanly, homely) worlds built for a story?
GENERAL MOANING
Why is it that washing machines have developed to have thousands of possible setting-combinations, but I still can’t reprogram the ‘I’m done now’ tone? This is not the empowered techno-future I wanted.
Ah, the simple joys of explaining to some fellow bourgeoisie that when I say my students ‘learn racism’ in their teens I do *not* mean ‘learn anti-racism’. I mean they learn how to be racist, and I try to teach them otherwise.
re. your complaint: Dear Sir, you’re not paying me enough to live; how do you think that’s enough for me to pretend to care about your fantasy that I’ll be grateful?
If you’re choosing an example job for workplace harm from bad display equipment and posture, there are few worse occupations to choose than an astronaut in zero-G.
GENERAL REJOICING
There are many better feelings than when someone very cool accepts an invitation to collaborate, but it is still a very good feeling.
An even better feeling: when the generally conservative person you’re speaking to nonetheless stands up for trans rights.
I saw a Polish supermarket named Europol, and I love it.
Get yourself a person who looks at you the way my set designer looks at a construction skip.
Trans Visibility Week implies the existence of Trans Invisibility 51 Weeks. The criminal opportunities are enticing.
BABBLING ECCENTRICITIES
In the first year of our marriage, my husband gave me his heart. Of course, he could only do that once, so in subsequent years he had to settle for other peoples’. If you’ll excuse me, I just need to top up their formaldehyde…
The dirty pot calls the kettle black, for the kitchen proletariat are divided against one another while their overlords do nothing to help provide them the material conditions they need to flourish.
“Out damned spot, out I say!” “Alright, but the audience won’t be able to see you.”
The main problem with any Romeo & Juliet-based ballet is how long it takes to work out which one is Romeo, Mercutio, and the other one.
This may be the closest I ever come to making a ‘tag yourself’ meme.
Does anyone want opera to have the same kind of fun merch as Shakespeare? Gloves that say “your tiny hands are frozen”, mugs saying “Fin ch’han dal vino”, reusable bottles of Dulcamara's Elixir of Love?
HIGH ART NAME-DROPPING
Jane Eyre implies the existence of Jane Earth, Jane Fire, and Jane Water.
Not at all humble brag: finished War & Peace. As someone who finds war novels have too much war, but likes a bit of dramatic violence in peaces of fiction, has as good a balance as the title promises.
Only complaint about War & Peace: it a great ending. Then an OK ending. Then a bad ending. Learn when to stop.
Presumably there is fanfic where Natasha Rostova writes to Lizzie Bennet about watching Floria Tosca?
There was something in the air that night,
The stars were bright,
Turandot…
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Highlights of 2021: doing shows, reuniting with friends, finally bringing Macbeth to life.
And maybe, just maybe, I should have pressed ‘Post’ on some of these.
Especially the one that’s not listed above.
So maybe not.
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