The Sarah Z video referenced by the linked one on Dr. Horrible is worth watching too.
I tried. The internet killed my attention span.
40-90-minute videos are the new thing, it seems.
It is driving me crazy that there are 2 copies of this post. I hesitated to comment on it for a while, because I didn't want to comment on the wrong one.
2, 3: I'm pretty sure I never would have watched the videos even with a better attention span. I think I've mentioned before, I hate how so much media these days is audiovisual instead of text and pictures. You want someone's opinion on politics, or tips on a game, or just an advice column on a workplace situation, there's a 25 percent chance and growing that it'll be either a podcast or a YouTube video. I prefer being able to get this stuff on my phone, and/or while watching an actual show on TV, and/or 2 minutes at a time in between doing chores. All that is much easier with text and pictures.
I enjoyed Dr. Horrible, but it's definitely incel/red pill/PUA-adjacent.
I saw Dr. Horrible a long time ago, but isn't it a critique of inceldom avant la lettre? The main character starts out as a lovable nerd, isn't the plot that because he can't get the girl he becomes a supervillain, and his actions lead to her death?
I hated the video, pretty much for the reasons in 5. I feel like the whole point could have been made in 3 paragraphs, and then I could have saved a bunch of time. The best videos are the ones can either use the audiovisual element to get their point across, or they themselves have an element of theatrical performance. Lindsay Ellis has a good video about Nazis and satire, and one of the points she makes is that while neo-Nazis can misappropriate dramatic performances, it's harder to misappropriate satire. She contrasts a clip of Edward Norton looking cool from American History X with a hammy clip from the Producers that drives home the point. Jenny Nicholson makes good videos, but they are essentially stand-up routines about random topics -- they are entertaining entirely because of her delivery. (The topics themselves are not intrinsically that interesting.)
6.1: kind of? Dr. Horrible is (or wants to be) a supervillain before he fails to get the girl. He's a villain, but the protagonist. He's a "nice guy". You've got the ending right, but I'm not sure the narrative is totally against him.
I just figured out this was the Neil Patrick Harris thing.
7: Doesn't it make him just sympathetic enough that you watch all the way to the end?
4: I literally had no idea until I read your comment! Fixed!
I hate how so much media these days is audiovisual instead of text and pictures.
In general, I am firmly in this camp. If someone links to a podcast that I think might be worth listening to, I am willing to spend significant time hunting for a transcript first NPR is very good about having transcripts, for ex.
I also get annoyed during regular zoom meetings that I can't set everyone to 1.5x or 2x speed.
(But I did enjoy the videos.)
The only time I'm willing to watch videos is when I'm in bed, on my ipad, at night.
Podcasts have much broader appeal because I can be jogging, walking, or driving.
I don't think it quite rises to the level of critique of incel culture (which technically it predates, but let's say sad nerd boy culture). Horrible isn't presented as a straightforwardly sympathetic character, certainly, but I got a strong sense of pathos on his behalf, flirting with taking his perspective, like "it's so tragic that in this position he had no choice but to turn this bad (because he was cockblocked)".
The first video does say upfront it doesn't think the incel logic is intentional on the writer's part, which I also agree with.
People, you're supposed to listen to the videos while watching sports and doomscrolling twitter and petting a cat.
It's a rare academic whose oratory isn't improved by 1.5x or 2x speed.
It is driving me crazy that there are 2 copies of this post.
Now that Nosflow added more storage to the blog, the FPPs decided to go for redundancy.
13: We went through several podcasts on 1.5 trips to Vermont in the past couple months and it was helpful that Cassandane had some in mind ready to be listened to. But of course these days there's no commute at all, unless dropping Atossa off for the day counts, and when there was a commute, I was usually biking, and a podcast would have been a dangerous distraction.
15: I'm often doing at least two of the following at the same time: watching TV (Netflix or similar platforms rather than sports), playing World of Warcraft, doomscrolling Reddit, and working. Podcasts haven't made the cut so far.
I prefer reading, but I have gradually grown to like (some) podcasts -- mostly listening while I'm on the computer doing other things. There are virtues to the format, and I've learned how to enjoy podcasts.
I haven't done that with video essays yet. I like some of them*, but am not invested in the format, and can find them really irritating. I watched the video on Dr. Horrible, and I think it's generally correct, but it also feels sort of condescending -- like somebody explaining something to me at length when I'd like to be able to interrupt and ask a question or just move on. In this case I am already familiar with the idea of nerds as bullies (and the fact that in far too many movies the main female character is, "a beacon of ambiguous desirable goodness"). I think he's correct that, "Penny is the problem . .. Penny isn't subverting shit." That's obviously true about Dr. Horrible. On the other hand I feel like there's important context that the video doesn't mention. He refers at various times to, "the writers" without mentioning that the writing process for Dr. Horrible was in response to a specific circumstance. From wikipedia
The series was written by writer/director Joss Whedon, his brothers Zack Whedon (a television writer) and Jed Whedon (a composer), and writer/actress Maurissa Tancharoen. The team wrote the musical during the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike. The idea was to create something small and inexpensive, yet professionally done, in a way that would circumvent the issues that were being protested during the strike.
It's clearly thrown together with familiar elements, and some of the spirit of, "hey, let's put on a show." It's not that ambitious in it's attempts to be subversive; it's trying to be fun.
He might or might not think that matters, but watching the video was that -- for me -- it spent a while on points which I agreed with immediately, and then didn't address the questions I would have found interesting.
* the "Every Frame A Painting" series on film remains on of the best things on the internet, and I still recommend them. For example I oddly love his video about chairs. Or the nerdwriter video on Steely Dan is good, but I haven't been tempted to go and watch his other videos.
It's now technically feasible to keep YouTube running on the phone in my pocket and listen to it as if it were a podcast. It can rack up data charges, though, and it means leaving the screen on and avoiding touching it in the pocket - keeping a video running with the screen off is a privilege reserved for paying users.
It's now technically feasible to keep YouTube running on the phone in my pocket and listen to it as if it were a podcast.
Isn't there a plugin to extract the audio from a youtube video as an mp3? I haven't tried it, but I remember seeing something (doesn't help if you specifically want something to use on your phone, but might be handy).
Isn't there a plugin to extract the audio from a youtube video as an mp3?
There are probably various browser extensions, but there's also the youtube-dl command-line program, which among other things lets you download only the audio if desired.
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On the general topic of fun short videos this is great (a blog post highlighting a particularly fun bollywood credits sequence). Not related to the OP, but I've been looking for an excuse to post the link, and thought I might as well.
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If you wanted to do the youtube-video-to-audio thing a lot, you could automate a workflow that uses Youtube-DL to get the audio, then publishes an RSS feed with links to the audio files, so that whatever podcast player you use could then "subscribe" to your list of files.
Our city streams/records its city council meetings over some private service called Granicus, which offers absolutely zero additional services, and it makes me lose my fucking mind. I would love to read a transcript of city council meetings. I would love to watch them at 2x speed. But because they use this dumb ass private vendor, none of those things are possible.
Is there an easy way to get an audio transcript of a meeting if you can't download the video and re-upload it to a different site?
I suppose I could play the meeting and have MS Streams or Youtube record my screen, and then generate a transcript. That seems insane but do-able...
That's probably why it's not on YouTube.
I never even heard of Dr. Horrible until this blog post. Nevertheless, out of a sense of duty to the blog, I started to watch this video about it. I listened through his explanation of the difference between super heroes and super villains, but then I had to stop, because it was all wrong. Super heroes may or may not choose to be powerful and super villains may or may not choose to be powerful. The distinction between them is how they use their power.
The real powers are the friends you meet along the way.
29:. Mojo JoJo didn't choose to become super intelligent - just to give one example.
And to say that Bruce Wayne didn't choose to become powerful because because he didn't choose to have his parents be killed in front of him, is a preposterous argument . By that standard there is no such thing as choice.
He pressured them to go to the theater.
33 I know I shouldn't weigh in on subjects I know less about than brain surgery, but why is anyone saying Batman is a superhero? Isn't his only 'power' obscene wealth?
He's a member of the Justice League. That qualifies.
Batman has several superhero traits that Iron Man doesn't, and I think most people would agree that Iron Man is a superhero.
Iron Man is super and a hero, but not a superhero.
Doesn't Iron Man also have obscene wealth? C'mon guys!
If we want to be specific, a "superhero" is any character called that by Marvel and DC, who co-own the trademark. Using it in any other way is just anarchy. Dogs and cats living together.
Golden Age comics, the environment in which Siegel and Schuster, who made Superman, as well as Bill Kane who made Batman, were a medium with a pretty big population of masked detectives who fought with their fists and their wits. DC abbreviates Detective Comics , which is where Batman appeared.
For anyone not familiar, Will Eisner's Spirit sections, basically comic books included in Sunday papers in the 40s and 50s, are truly wonderful, he was a genius.
I thought it was Bil Keane. I've been telling people an incorrect factoid for years.
Isn't Batman pretty much by definition a superhero, in that "superhero" is the name for the class of characters that Superman and Batman are the most famous examples of?
Honestly, I don't know how the pick the absolute greatest. He's up there.
Stop buying the corporate frame! A superhero has magic powers.
And a detective has a brain, a set of tools, and armor with nipples.
Nekulturny.
http://talesfromthekryptonian.blogspot.com/2014/09/black-and-white-sunday-spirit.html
https://13thdimension.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Spirit-Splash-Dec-8-1940.jpg
Properly all DC superheroes should be "detectives".
48 The corporate frame is that a superhero has magic powers (e.g. The X-Men). A super hero is any vigilante who puts on a mask and a cape and kicks the shit out of criminals.
