Items in the churn

[isozyme]

 I've got a bunch of posts queued up in my head that I want to make soon, but that are still in the maturing process in my head:

 

• One is probably a series.  I've read a really large number of Marvel comics issues since the start of October, and I have a lot to say about the use of art in storytelling.  Most of it is gripes.  Generally I want to talk about how artists and authors pass information on to the reader with everything they put into a comic.  All of that information should serve the story.  I've come across a lot of comics art that is um...not serving the story, and instead serving up a hot plate of Sex and Spectacle.  Sometimes the author and the artist are both telling a sexy and spectacular story!  Sometimes the author, however, has other plans, and then everyone's running at cross-purposes and it's a mess.

• I want to make a more in-depth post about the way I wish I could re-imagine modern art museums.  Art museums are cold, uncomfortable, hard-to-navigate places.  I love modern art so much because it's -- it's like poetry.  It takes an idea and crystalizes it into an object.  So much contemporary art is an opening to a difficult question.  Ai Wei Wei takes pictures of himself dropping a priceless Ming vase and it makes you so angry because why has he ruined something so valuable, and then when you ask why that thing is valuable, and what else does Ai Wei Wei wish he could destroy, and hey did you know that the Chinese government would really like to put Ai Wei Wei back in jail to stop him making art?  What's that all about?  Art museums should make it easy to ask all of those questions!  Instead they display art like treasures, notable for their cultural cache, their monetary value, and not much else.

• There's a big one about observational prose.  Someone left a comment on my most recent fic that said it was "incredibly intuitive but not obvious" and "instantly inhabitable" and I just about DIED OF SMUGNESS ON THE SPOT.  I have about a zillion things to say about what things go into making stories that feel like that, and why they take so much effort.  Probably this dovetails into a large discussion about what makes something literature vs not literature or something.

• In a very angry note on my phone about my feelings as a butch woman about how people identify as "non-binary women" that I definitely can never post because it is mean-spirited and not productive.  Suffice to say that I feel threatened by anything that narrows the definition of woman.

• Of course I always have some salt to share about how scientific presentations are BORING, IMPERSONAL AND HOMOGENOUS.  Also, the next person who shows a plot of Principle Component Analysis who obviously has no idea what PCA actually does is going to make me tear my hair out.  Also, graduate school exploits students for labor under the guise of eternal training, and so do postdoc positions.  Science is bad.

Other than that, today I bought zucchini bread and peanut butter cup bars from the Mennonites at the farmer's market, topped up on cat food, ate my favorite cheese fries from the place down the street that looks like a weird hole in the wall and sells the only decent pizza I've found in Philly, and then spent two hours at the vet getting about a thousand medications for our foster cat.

 

Comments

Art in comics

[loran_arameri]

What I have noticed for myself is that I only notice the art if it's outstandingly appealing or something bugs me about it. Both are definitely not objective criteria.

I would like to hear your thoughts about it.
*sits and waits patiently*

Re: Art in comics

[isozyme]

It's not that I dislike comics art! But something in my brain means I always notice the art while I read, maybe more than the words, and then I have a lot of thoughts about it.

Hopefully if I split things up into a series I'll ever get any of it onto a page instead of turning it into a monstrous WIP that never ends. We'll see!

[cachinna]

Oh man I want to read ALL of these.

[isozyme]

Right now when i try to articulate most of them it devolves into hand gestures and "just, you know, you KNOW, right?" Eventually, paragraphs.

[sadisticsparkle]

It would be really interesting to see a series on US comics art. As somebody who grew up reading my country's comics + manga, it was reallydifficult to even understand at first and I haven't seen many series that have impressed me with their storytelling.

[isozyme]

I've posted part one where I expound on hating muscles! I agree that superhero comics so often turn into absolute visual soup and it's a huge barrier to entry. Maybe if I yell about it enough something will change! (It won't, I'm still going to yell.)

[wintersheir]

Of course I always have some salt to share about how scientific presentations are BORING, IMPERSONAL AND HOMOGENOUS.

ONE!!!! person in my thesis presentation class dared to make a non-shite/boring presentation and all the comments he got back were like "please be more serious" and inside I was like NO!!!!!!!!!!

Then again a TA told me that me joking with my (literally,) sleeping class that they needed to calm down because it was my turn to present "bummed everyone out" and "offended" them, so maybe I am not funny and a dork.*

*(Both may be true)

[isozyme]

Science has socially constructed its way into being unbearably boring! Why did they do this to themselves!

I have been told to be more "professional" in tone more than once, because GOD FORBID you try to form any kind of connection with your audience. Presenting science is a complex, difficult performance and doing it right is emotionally draining. Unfortunately, to do it right you have to talk like a human, and so far the scientists I hang out with are largely against doing that in a professional setting. Go figure.

[manyblinkinglights]

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