Annie D

of course the TLOU show is "good." Just like the mcu is full of "joke-core" sentences, prestige tv is full of "good-core" filmmaking... in the modern media landscape, "good-core" is more important than "good." Every prestige tv show thats clawing for relevance will do like a tracking shot episode (i hear The Bear is actually good, but the point stands) or a fucking The Red Balloon riff or something. Its not hard to do. It's NOT hard to do

doing a "weird episode" of a regular tv show used to be just cause they had a good idea. The community parallel universes ep, If, Then, Else from Person of Interest, The Chinese Restaurant, Fly, the "Episode 19" tradition in Fringe (weird examples, but its just off the top of my head). Now its calculated. A cynical read on modern Prestige TV would be that it's about straining all of the workmanlike iteration out of "base" tv and making an entire show of "outstanding episodes"- you can see this with the Netflix model of tv shows not having discrete episodes anymore. it's 13 hours of one continuous dramatic arc. The whole idea is applying refined media/Film aesthetics to the puerile TV medium- its a spectacle of Signifiers.

MCU shows will have a pointless tracking shot action sequence for no reason other than to get people to pog for it. its not really about fitting the thrust of a good adaptation or refining the tonal landscape of the work, its about adding another checkmark to the "this is is Important art you can put on your wall" box. Aesthetic version of adding in a Bechdel Test-passing scene in a show that's broadly disinterested in women.

One of my friends compared TLOU HBO to that waluigi analysis. It is a Waluigi tv show. An imitation of a prestige game imitating prestige tv. A copy of a copy. in a sense its the ultimate prestige show cause its PURE pretension- a crab thats all shell.

i miss 3/4 of the refs in this post but yeah, yeah, this is it, see - TV used to be okay with being okay.

i love star trek the next generation and i love it because I think its method of delivering Serious Social Commentary or of adding Dramatic Characterization was goofy and fell apart on scrutiny, because there were never any serious consequences, the federation was basically the same from ep to ep and bounced back from every awful thing that happened. that's GOOD. it's GOOD that every single episode reset the world at the end. that's what most of life is!

most of reality is not gut-wrenching traumatizing experiences that permanently change you. most days you just wake up and have a fucking burrito and go to work and star trek was capable of being that. there's an ep that's just "let's follow data for a whole day and see what hijinks he gets up to. no A plot."

then every single FUCKING time i look at any info about post-2009 Star Trek i learn about ANOTHER named, often beloved character from earlier franchises that they killed off brutally just to make another gut-wrenching, jarring Serious Cinematic Moment, because hey, you can't make Prestige with redshirts, right? the whole point of modern star trek is to make people go through stages of grief because characters that have been part of their cultural canon for their entire life are now Officially Dead, and that means they have to keep mining deeper and deeper for someone NEW that you recognize and can feel sorrow over losing forever. have they killed ro laren yet? fuck all television and fuck all movies made after 2005 modern media is sewage

star trek the next generation has the same emotional weight as a normal conversation. like you're arguing with a roommate about doing the dishes, and when you've pretty much resolved it you drop some nugget of wisdom you genuinely came up with, like "if we could divide every day into equal amounts of generic time and spread them evenly amongst everyone, then none of us would ever have to do an unfair amount of anything, but that's not the universe we live in," and you both feel like that really cleared things up for you, but even if what you just said was really dope you're both standing in a $850/mo. apartment with taupe accent walls in a california suburb and it just doesn't matter that much

If you're registered to vote within Seattle city limits, you should have a BLUE envelope from King County Elections in your mail. Open it up! The February special election has a single ballot measure in Seattle: Initiative 135, which if approved would create an authority to build and buy publicly owned housing in Seattle:

By creating a community-controlled Social Housing Developer to buy and build housing that will be available to those across the income spectrum, Seattle will have another critical tool to address the suffering, displacement, and inequity that defines our housing landscape. We can create a Seattle not just for those with generational wealth and high incomes, but where everyone can afford to live and thrive.

You can read the full initiative text online or in the ballot packet you received, and The Stranger's endorsement of the initiative, which I find to be a helpful summary of what the initiative will and won't do on its own. As they write, it's not perfect, but I still believe it's worth your Yes vote.

Remember to sign and date the back of your return envelope before you drop it in the mail or in a drop-off box!

If you live in Seattle and need to register to vote, you can register online by February 6; do so as soon as possible so you can receive a ballot in time. You can also register and vote in person at KCE's Renton facility until polls close on the 14th.
Don't have your ballot? Track it at My Voter Information. If necessary and you have access to a printer (such as the library), you can use the online ballot-marking program to mark and print a ballot to mail to KCE.
What was the deal with the pink envelope from Elections? KCE sent every registered voter an optional form to add signatures to their voter registration. Every time you vote, your signature is validated against your registration, but signatures change over time. You can still vote if you didn't return it.
Other questions? Contact King County Elections (elections@kingcounty.gov).

i love the kafkaesque experience of password resets.

"that password is too similar to a previous password"

to which one? similar in what way? and does that have any security impact? (it does not)

you can spend hours sitting at one of these prompts, unable to do your job. literally the only practical solution is to shit line noise into the godforsaken thing, then use a password manager.

the sole reason password managers are useful is that they don't have dumbshit requirements, so you can use the same, low-complexity password, that you can actually remember, indefinitely. that's what they are. they are a "complexity requirements condom"

After 20 minutes of grinding my teeth as the stupid piece of shit rejected every password I could come up with (including Correcthorsebatterystaple) the stupid piece of shit finally accepted "Horseshit!fable" so, that's a freebie if you can figure out which system I was logging into.

the progression from “hello yes I am nearby” to “all I am asking for is the simple dignity of my captor giving me my due feed, you must at least give me this, anything less is surely a war crime” in this image set is one reason why cats are extremely good