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allekhaI spent all of yesterday and several hours this morning hunting down a very annoying bug in my code, which I found after fixing a different bug. At least it is gone now. All I had to do in the end was add a copy.copy() to a couple of lines. Might've been easier to find if I could use the debugger, but, uh, it froze when I tried, so I'll see if it's still not working after I upgrade Ubuntu again and hopefully get to a newer Python version.
Called my parents the other day, and despite the nothing that has been happening, managed to have a solid half-hour chat with both of them while I was waiting for my chickpea curry to cook. My mom just got approval to go back into work, since there's nobody else in her lab, but she's only planning on going for a couple hours at a time to do things that she can't do at home. She's also only teaching online next semester, because all courses need to be half online anyway and it sounds like it's going to be really obnoxious to do in-person teaching. At least she already has experience teaching online, so she has some idea of how to adjust her classes. Good luck to all the teachers out there. (I am hoping our seminar is online so I don't have to go into campus and get tested every other week.)
Oh, and the test results came back from my blood donation. As of Monday last week, there are no detectable COVID antibodies in my blood. I celebrated by going out to grocery shop (I got delivery after I went to the protest, just in case) and thankfully hit the store when almost nobody was in there.
My foot is still mysteriously hurt (get better already, damn it) and so I'm trying to rest it, but I've exercised every day this week so far anyway. I want muscles :| The stretching I've been doing has also been working - I was doing a variation on the dancer's pose the other day and found that when warmed up, I can now touch my foot to my head :D I only did it for a second because I don't want to hurt anything. A haircutter spin will be mine one day... if I can learn how to balance in a layback position first....
I recently got hooked on The Untamed on Netflix. I'm about halfway through, and I really like it and want to see if I find the translation of the original novel readable. Please don't be full of comma splices. I did almost drop it after the first episode - I found it really, really confusing without the later context - but the costume game was strong, so I tried the second episode, which was better, and from the third on it was good and no longer that confusing.
Seriously, the costumes are so pretty. Many of them also look comfortable! Although that may be me projecting from the time I made hanfu for my Souryuu costume ages ago. The scenery is so pretty, too - I'd love to visit many of the buildings. I also really like the main actors, and the sibling relationships. Oddly enough, they might be more compelling to me than the main ship so far. (Maybe it's the fault of the censorship, but I found it kind of confusing when and why Lan Wangji started liking Wei Wuxian.)
I am pretty disappointed in the quality of the subtitles, though, and also a little confused because I've never run into any other Netflix subs that were at all bad. It's not just awkward sentences; I don't think whoever translated it was a native speaker and they don't seem to have been edited by anyone who was. There's a lot of missing articles, tense issues (particularly 'have + x' when simple past tense x should be used), and wrong/strange word choices. They also don't even try with wordplay, which is confusing at one or two points (I had to look up why Wei Wuxian's sword's name was weird), and don't use nicknames/relationship terms - I don't speak any Mandarin, but I can still tell they're not saying the name in the subtitles.
On a non-subs-related note, I find the passage of time in the show to be confusing and would like to see both a timeline and a map of where everything is.
I also recently watched Disclosure, a documentary examining the history of transgender characters in TV and film and trans people on talk shows, in the US - sort of like "The Celluloid Closet" but for trans people. It was very interesting, and apparently everyone behind the scenes was either trans or, if they couldn't find a trans person for that role, was partnered with a trans person to mentor, which is pretty great! Topics include:
- Lack of trans men in TV/film media compared to trans women and why that is
- Personal reactions and memories of trans script writers, actors, etc to transgender characters in various films
- The portrayal of disgust and specifically vomiting as a reaction to trans women
- How trans characters on medical shows are often 'punished' for transition by their hormones causing health problems, or else have their diagnosis be something specific to their birth sex
- Trans women being portrayed as sex workers very often
- How trans characters being played by cis actors may influence how people watching think of real trans people and their trans identities as something that is acted and can be 'taken off'
- Representation in media is important, but not the be-all end-all and change needs to be made IRL as well
- Talk show hosts who used to ask the usual dumb and offensive questions learning to not do that
- The progress that's been made in recent years :)
The reactions to some of the imperfect portrayals really resonated with me - when I was first coming to terms with my gender identity, I went to the library and checked out the two or three YA novels with trans characters that they had. Reading them really, really meant a lot to me at that time. I haven't reread them since, but later I found reviews blasting at least one of them, saying they would never give it to a trans teenager coming into their library. It felt very weird. Imperfect was far, far better than absolutely nothing for me. (I also found a Delicious board with trans-related fic tagged, and I think also a general listing on someone's LJ, and devoured everything genderqueer-related.)
(Also, I found while watching this that apparently I can no longer watch 'Paris is Burning' clips without instantly thinking of how one of the women was murdered and another had a dead body in her closet for a decade :/)
My criticisms of it are minor, but:
- Sometimes 'trans woman of color' was used when they seemed to mean specifically 'black trans woman', which was confusing
- Similarly, there was a lot of emphasis on black trans people and characters, a brief discussion of Asian trans people and characters that didn't come up again, and I believe no mentions of any other ethnic/racial minorities. Other intersectional things got a one-line mention near the beginning, and there was one very short clip of a (presumably trans) man signing (which I had to look up, as it was unlabeled) - why wasn't that brought up later as an example of growing diversity in trans characters?
- The nonexistence of genderqueer characters is mentioned once and then never again; might've been nice to mention once more towards the end
- Some of the film/TV clips are labeled or named by person speaking about it, but many are not
It also made me want this sort of thing, but for other media that I'm more interested in, like books, video games, and animation.
Called my parents the other day, and despite the nothing that has been happening, managed to have a solid half-hour chat with both of them while I was waiting for my chickpea curry to cook. My mom just got approval to go back into work, since there's nobody else in her lab, but she's only planning on going for a couple hours at a time to do things that she can't do at home. She's also only teaching online next semester, because all courses need to be half online anyway and it sounds like it's going to be really obnoxious to do in-person teaching. At least she already has experience teaching online, so she has some idea of how to adjust her classes. Good luck to all the teachers out there. (I am hoping our seminar is online so I don't have to go into campus and get tested every other week.)
Oh, and the test results came back from my blood donation. As of Monday last week, there are no detectable COVID antibodies in my blood. I celebrated by going out to grocery shop (I got delivery after I went to the protest, just in case) and thankfully hit the store when almost nobody was in there.
My foot is still mysteriously hurt (get better already, damn it) and so I'm trying to rest it, but I've exercised every day this week so far anyway. I want muscles :| The stretching I've been doing has also been working - I was doing a variation on the dancer's pose the other day and found that when warmed up, I can now touch my foot to my head :D I only did it for a second because I don't want to hurt anything. A haircutter spin will be mine one day... if I can learn how to balance in a layback position first....
I recently got hooked on The Untamed on Netflix. I'm about halfway through, and I really like it and want to see if I find the translation of the original novel readable. Please don't be full of comma splices. I did almost drop it after the first episode - I found it really, really confusing without the later context - but the costume game was strong, so I tried the second episode, which was better, and from the third on it was good and no longer that confusing.
Seriously, the costumes are so pretty. Many of them also look comfortable! Although that may be me projecting from the time I made hanfu for my Souryuu costume ages ago. The scenery is so pretty, too - I'd love to visit many of the buildings. I also really like the main actors, and the sibling relationships. Oddly enough, they might be more compelling to me than the main ship so far. (Maybe it's the fault of the censorship, but I found it kind of confusing when and why Lan Wangji started liking Wei Wuxian.)
I am pretty disappointed in the quality of the subtitles, though, and also a little confused because I've never run into any other Netflix subs that were at all bad. It's not just awkward sentences; I don't think whoever translated it was a native speaker and they don't seem to have been edited by anyone who was. There's a lot of missing articles, tense issues (particularly 'have + x' when simple past tense x should be used), and wrong/strange word choices. They also don't even try with wordplay, which is confusing at one or two points (I had to look up why Wei Wuxian's sword's name was weird), and don't use nicknames/relationship terms - I don't speak any Mandarin, but I can still tell they're not saying the name in the subtitles.
On a non-subs-related note, I find the passage of time in the show to be confusing and would like to see both a timeline and a map of where everything is.
I also recently watched Disclosure, a documentary examining the history of transgender characters in TV and film and trans people on talk shows, in the US - sort of like "The Celluloid Closet" but for trans people. It was very interesting, and apparently everyone behind the scenes was either trans or, if they couldn't find a trans person for that role, was partnered with a trans person to mentor, which is pretty great! Topics include:
- Lack of trans men in TV/film media compared to trans women and why that is
- Personal reactions and memories of trans script writers, actors, etc to transgender characters in various films
- The portrayal of disgust and specifically vomiting as a reaction to trans women
- How trans characters on medical shows are often 'punished' for transition by their hormones causing health problems, or else have their diagnosis be something specific to their birth sex
- Trans women being portrayed as sex workers very often
- How trans characters being played by cis actors may influence how people watching think of real trans people and their trans identities as something that is acted and can be 'taken off'
- Representation in media is important, but not the be-all end-all and change needs to be made IRL as well
- Talk show hosts who used to ask the usual dumb and offensive questions learning to not do that
- The progress that's been made in recent years :)
The reactions to some of the imperfect portrayals really resonated with me - when I was first coming to terms with my gender identity, I went to the library and checked out the two or three YA novels with trans characters that they had. Reading them really, really meant a lot to me at that time. I haven't reread them since, but later I found reviews blasting at least one of them, saying they would never give it to a trans teenager coming into their library. It felt very weird. Imperfect was far, far better than absolutely nothing for me. (I also found a Delicious board with trans-related fic tagged, and I think also a general listing on someone's LJ, and devoured everything genderqueer-related.)
(Also, I found while watching this that apparently I can no longer watch 'Paris is Burning' clips without instantly thinking of how one of the women was murdered and another had a dead body in her closet for a decade :/)
My criticisms of it are minor, but:
- Sometimes 'trans woman of color' was used when they seemed to mean specifically 'black trans woman', which was confusing
- Similarly, there was a lot of emphasis on black trans people and characters, a brief discussion of Asian trans people and characters that didn't come up again, and I believe no mentions of any other ethnic/racial minorities. Other intersectional things got a one-line mention near the beginning, and there was one very short clip of a (presumably trans) man signing (which I had to look up, as it was unlabeled) - why wasn't that brought up later as an example of growing diversity in trans characters?
- The nonexistence of genderqueer characters is mentioned once and then never again; might've been nice to mention once more towards the end
- Some of the film/TV clips are labeled or named by person speaking about it, but many are not
It also made me want this sort of thing, but for other media that I'm more interested in, like books, video games, and animation.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-02 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-02 06:25 pm (UTC)