Disqus - Latest Comments for isabelthespy

Re: I Treat My PTSD By Watching "Law & Order"

isabelthespy — Wed, 10 Jul 2013 13:31:28 -0000

Have you ever watched Criminal Minds? It's my crime procedural of choice these days after years of SVU loyalty. It can be kind of over-extreme during the "shots of serial killers" scenes (it is a show about serial killers but it gets progressively more tasteless about how it depicts them, which I like to call SVU Syndrome) but it has that crime procedural formula and the magically committed and also somewhat haunted agents (although they are less "obviously should have been fired, like, ten years ago" than Stabler). I mention it here not just because I like it but specifically because it's a show about criminal profiling so it's got that psychological aspect you highlight as something you appreciate about CI (which I also loved - I suspect loving one suggests a high likelihood of liking the other). And, especially, the whole aspect of "there is no why" was something that resonated with me as something I like about CM - it's got "reasons" about why the specifics of the criminals develop the way they do, but is very agnostic about the question of why some people do these horrific things when other people do not. Anyway, there is no comforting dunk-dunk sound, but I thought I'd mention it!(I loved this article, by the way!!!)

Re: xoJane

isabelthespy — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 15:30:25 -0000

The thing is that the tattoo you get at the shop is not the one you will have in ten years (or actually even in a week, but after that the rate of change slows down). There's no way to prevent tattoos from aging (and I don't mean you getting wrinkled, I mean the ink moving around or no longer being in your body), but tattooing is a long-lived art form and artists have developed a lot of knowledge about what makes a tattoo age well. I'm not trying to lecture you -- most people don't know this and neither did I until I started reading http://dermagraphique.tumbl... which is run by an experienced tattoo artist who talks a lot about why designs that look awesome on paper may make terrible tattoos (I'm on my phone or I'd link some good examples of his critiques but I would 100% recommend that site to anyone considering a tattoo; I have a doofy tiny kanji tattoo I still love in a "this represents important life lessons from when I was 19 and stupid" way, no regrets, but I am SUPER glad I found it before I got anymore and am sure whatever i decide on when I can afford one will be way better after reading this guy's advice). Anyway it's your body but I really encourage you to check him out, and personally now I would consider a tattoo artist willing to copy something not designed by someone knowledgeable about tattoos without trying to (respectfully!) steer the customer in the direction of something that would maximize its potential to hold up over time to be very ethically sketchy and more interested in making money than providing the best service. It has nothing to do with how good the design is as non-tattoo art; no one would say Leonardo da Vinci didn't know his shit but that doesn't mean the Mona Lisa would make a good tattoo.

I'm really sorry if this comes across like I'm lecturing or trying to condescend -- I obviously have no investment in your tattoo plans, lol (except to hope you wind up satisfied!). I just know if I'd gotten a second tattoo and then found all this stuff out later I would have been pretty pissed if my artist hadn't told me, and on the lookout for someone better to fix it at more money and pain to me, lol.

Re: http://thecurvature.tumblr.com/post/570841553

isabelthespy — Tue, 04 May 2010 12:20:24 -0000

lol i know right? we're like the g-spot brigade or some shit

Re: http://isabelthespy.tumblr.com/post/383226508

isabelthespy — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:15:51 -0000

dude! that would actually be awesome, thanks so much for the offer!

Re: http://isabelthespy.tumblr.com/post/380887870

isabelthespy — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:06:55 -0000

Oh, ha, sorry if this wasn't clear but i did read the entire autostraddle piece, and i linked it approvingly in an earlier post i'm too lazy to look for now. i do think the autostraddle piece was a little bit over the top in some ways - again, positioning her as a feminist's nightmare i think is a little too hyperbolic given that even something like reproductive rights is such a contested issue now, when we have no guaranteed maternity leave in this country, when the majority of rapes still go unreported.

i also kind of think if you're looking for a 50s throwback you can start earlier than taylor, and i'd go further to say we've never shed our obsession with female "purity" and innocence and taylor('s public image) is just the latest incarnation of that. and i reeeally doubt that two pop stars (out of a whole lot of pop stars currently working) are going to manage to turn any girls into anything, really. taylor might be reinforcing a pre-existing message, but i don't believe that a single artist is going to somehow make a girl switch from science major to MRS degree.

But, the only issue I mentioned with the autostraddle piece - which, again, I linked to - was that i found it a bit over the top (which was also, i admit, part of the fun). this entire post was responding to the jezebel piece, which i was pissed off at, as i said in the post, for making me defend taylor swift, whom i really strongly dislike on a visceral as well as political level.

Re: http://isabelthespy.tumblr.com/post/377784170

isabelthespy — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 05:11:07 -0000

lol RIGHT? and ha that is kind of an awesome idea.

also i enjoyed your rant, only partly because it made me feel all aware and shit remembering a bunch of discussions in my nazi cinema class about german angst re: hitler (which... understandable!).

Re: so maybe everyone else caught onto this when they actually read deathly hallows, or shortly thereafter

isabelthespy — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:37:49 -0000

i should also mention that rowling is far, FAR from the only author to subscribe to or indulge these tropes in fiction (or in real life), and i don't think she consciously set out to do this in the terms i described. but i do think that's how the books wound up, i suspect in large part because of too little questioning of long-standing fictional traditions and cultural beliefs that are ingrained in all of us and need to be actively considered in order to be dismissed. the ones i've mentioned are connected to a whole host of other problematic assumptions about women (and men and gender roles more broadly), like the idea of women as being more inherently moral than men, or somehow more "pure," or more caring, or more connected to their children, etc. rowling isn't the only offender and she's far from the worst - from what i've heard, for example, the twilight books are far worse in terms of their conception of women and gender roles. there are some good gender-related things in the harry potter books - i do have problems with hermione's characterization (not because of what it IS so much as what it isn't - i think she could have been developed into a more interesting character without losing the characteristics we do know about her) and with the fact that there are some very stereotypical things about her (namely the way she's often "nagging" harry and ron about things), but she is a smart and strong female hero which is pretty cool. and while i've always just found ginny kind of a boring character i do love her speech to ron in book 6 about how he needs to get out of her business because she can date whoever she wants. also mcgonagall is a badass, no denying. but just because the books have good things, or because they're better than a lot of books out there, doesn't mean they're perfect.

Re: so maybe everyone else caught onto this when they actually read deathly hallows, or shortly thereafter

isabelthespy — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:25:22 -0000

other people have written about this better than i have ( this page: http://reconciliate.wordpre... has some points i agree with, generally, written well) but the basic gist of my issues with the role motherhood, and to a lesser extent wifehood more generally, plays in the series is basically that any women who are mothers, that's their entire identity, that's all we know about them. all we know about mrs. weasley is what a good mother she is, and other things that are related to that. even though she's enough of a badass to join the order, we don't get to see her doing anything badass until the seventh book. once tonks gets with remus, we literally never see her again until she's dead. once fleur - a former triwizard contender - gets married, we only see her being married to bill, while bill gets to talk serious things with the trio. and again, literally all we know about lily is that she was good at charms, a good person, and she really loved harry.

now, none of these attributes are a problem by themselves. the problem is that this doesn't apply at all to ANY of the fathers in the series. arthur has a job and interests outside his children. bill and remus both get to keep doing non-domestic things after getting married (maybe their wives were too, but the books don't mention this). and while i do like the couple of lily and james i think they're the worst offenders, because lily is practically a cipher, praised, again, for her goodness and skill in charms - good things, yes, but not the makings of a well-rounded character - whereas james has all these friends we get to hear about and even meet, james has quidditch and great grades and all these pranks he and sirius pulled, james, in other words, has a full and rich backstory, whereas lily is more part of james' backstory (and, at the end, part of snape's) than she is a star in her own backstory. which again, by itself that might be okay, but it's part of such a trend in the books that i think it's kind of messed up.

then there's also the emphasis on a mother's love, which frankly i think is problematic both for mothers (because they're elevated to this platform of near-saintliness, instead of getting to be human characters) and fathers - you know, james was also willing to die to protect harry, but dumbledore never says anything about that. it's like james's love, which was obviously equally strong to lily's, counts less because he's a father and not a mother.

overall the series just buys into this very old trope that motherhood is the highest calling a woman can have but fatherhood is not the highest calling a man can have - or at least, if it is, it's not so high that it overshadows everything else in a father's life. there's nothing wrong with having a series full of devoted and caring mothers, and i also don't want to say that, for example, arthur ISN'T a devoted and caring father. it's just that arthur is a devoted and caring father and also other things, and molly is almost entirely a devoted and caring mother, and that applies to almost all the (adult) couples in the series and i think it's problematic.

(i also do kind of have a problem, both in general and on a personal level as a child of divorce who gives thanks every day her parents split up, with the fact that there are literally no divorced couples in the series, and the only product of split-up parents winds up being, um, VOLDEMORT... unless snape's parents are also split up? it's been a while. but that's only tangentially related.)

Re: http://thecurvature.tumblr.com/post/367440460

isabelthespy — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:16:19 -0000

psssst i think you had a copy-paste fail, because the link leads to a broken tumblr link on your own tumblr that, judging from the url, has something to do with musings on sexual terrorism which... is not what i would have expected out of lost bingo, to say the least.

Re: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

isabelthespy — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 13:18:02 -0000

dude that class was awesome. i highly recommend it in the future. if you are an english concentrator/have taken previous english classes/have any conception of the difference between "literary analysis/discussion" and "book reviewing," i will warn you that maybe the one drawback is that it attracts a lot of people who have never taken an english class, so you will probably spend a disproportionate amount of section time going over basics of thesis statements ("so, this example is bad because it does not actually present an argument") and also arguing about the logistics of scifi things. but if you haven't that's probably a good thing, and in THAT case i would warn you that there might be times when you will want to scream HOLY SHIT I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SCIFI AND FANTASY I CAN'T BELIEVE PEOPLE SPEND PROFESSIONAL TIME DEBATING THIS. i fell into both categories depending on the day. sometimes i managed to be both at once, like the day we spent twenty minutes on whether or not to qualify as scifi something has to be theoretically possible (NOTE TO EVERYONE: WE ARE PRETTY SURE FASTER THAN LIGHT TRAVEL IS NOT POSSIBLE).

with that said, as you can probably tell by how ludicrously long this comment is, i really enjoyed the class, burt is a really good professor and also adorably geeky which is always a plus for me, and also spends a fair amount of time making (occasionally passive-aggresive and frequently very funny) jabs at his peers who take potshots at "low culture," which is a HUGE plus for me (i mean i took this class and crime narratives in the same semester), and, as you can tell by this post, despite the fact that i spent the entire semester having a nervous breakdown, i still managed to learn some things, which says something. so. yes. i do recommend it :)

Re: so maybe everyone else caught onto this when they actually read deathly hallows, or shortly thereafter

isabelthespy — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:12:35 -0000

ah, you know what? as i hit post, i realized that there may be one instance of a wizard wearing pants - i think at some point after they open their joke shop fred and george are described as wearing some ridiculous pants or something. so, if that's true, i stand corrected, and i don't know what to make of that considering the fact that i really do think it is the only mention, compared to many, many mentions of robes, maybe the latest generation of wizards is pro-pants and the old guy is an old-fashioned wizard who grew up wearing robes and will stay that way (which... still doesn't understand why pants would have taken so long to catch on, and i stand by my other points... but whatever, other people have nitpicked JKR's worldbuilding/consistency better than i ever could, that's kind of a dead horse).

Re: so maybe everyone else caught onto this when they actually read deathly hallows, or shortly thereafter

isabelthespy — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:06:55 -0000

for the record - the pants thing is based in large part on the fact that whenever wizard clothing is described, they are in fact wearing robes, like i feel like maybe, in a series so full of visual description, it would have been mentioned at least once over the several thousand pages, and also the fact that, IIRC, wizards tend to feel uncomfortable/awkward in robes, in particular from that one scene in goblet of fire at the quidditch world cup grounds where one of the ministry people is trying to get some old dude to wear pants so he can pass as a muggle, and the dude is all "i like a healthy breeze round my privates," which suggests to me that at the very least, robes are the overwhelming norm in the wizarding world. maybe not! i don't claim to read JKR's mind! & - if you read the original post and/or my response to playagainstyou's second post, my point isn't that it doesn't make sense, because i agree, humans are super irrational! but rather that it annoys me that, IMO, the book portrays snape's whole lily-fixation as this beautiful tragic romantic and redeeming thing (i really do think the whole "prince's tale" sequence is set up primarily to gain sympathy for snape, especially with the last line about the eyes, and in particular, harry, whose POV is never questioned except in the rare cases where it's later proven to be factually inaccurate, names his son in part for snape - having the hero of the books name his child for this guy suggests, to me, that we are meant to feel as harry does about snape at the end, this understanding leading to forgiveness/praise). i mean - the fact that you refer to it as unrequited love sort of illustrates my frustration, because i do think the book attempts to sell it as unrequited love, but actually, IMO, it's not anything even close to love, and the fact that JKR tries to paint it as such is... gross, to me. again - if i thought it were a character thing, and we were meant to see mostly why it was so messed up/that snape is a pathetic person because of it, i wouldn't have a problem with it, because i agree, let her characters do what they want! to me, though, the book is trying to sell snape as a tragic hero; it's not the characters' actions, it's the attitude the book takes towards them.

which - YMMV, many ways to read it, etc., you may still disagree which is totally cool. i didn't really comment here to argue/attempt to convince you of my point (i mean if you wanna debate it, i'd be down, but that's not what i came here for); i just wanted to clarify what, in fact, my point actually was, since it's not clear from the snippet you're responding to (understandably - i've actually rolled my eyes at people complaining that JKR had some characters do things, because hey, it's her story! so i'm definitely sympathetic to that point of view. again - i don't mean to criticize the characters' actions, but rather the way the book presents/suggests we interpret those actions). i don't want to come across defensive, & i'm not one of those OMG SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET MUST ARGUE THEM UNTIL THE BREAK OF DAWN types. but, maybe it's silly/petty/a sign i am too attached to my tumblr at this point, but i do take issue with being misinterpreted (which i don't blame you for at all, going off that snippet alone), & i guess i prefer people to disagree with my actual opinions, lol.

Re: Champagne Candy

isabelthespy — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:59:54 -0000

soon i hope! hit me up at isabelthespy at gmail dot com & let's make plans! *coughhaveyouseensherlockholmesyetcough*

Re: so one of my embarrassing internet addictions

isabelthespy — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 12:19:35 -0000

oh goodness, well aren't you the sweetest thing! i am blushing furiously/incredibly touched! also, idk how serious/literal you are about the hanging thing, but if you do want, hit me up at isabelthespy at gmail dot com! you are also awesome!

Re: I'd like to move to New York just for the acapella competitions.

isabelthespy — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:53:42 -0000

man, so i feel kinda douchey doing this but it's mostly cuz i have this like borderline OCD thing about correct attribution in all circumstances but - the lavender lines post you just reblogged was actually my post that she reblogged from me; the quote at the beginning isn't mine, it's from the article i linked to in the post (lol that is what i get for being way vague). also sorry to leave this in this random place but i couldn't figure out another way to do it cuz comments don't exist on that entry? or i am stupid and can't work disqus? i don't know.

Re: Champagne Candy

isabelthespy — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:45:41 -0000

*blushes* <3

Re: some people's picket fences are covered in poison ivy

isabelthespy — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:27:19 -0000

thank you!

Re: tangerine trees and marmalade skies

isabelthespy — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:43:16 -0000

heh if it makes you feel any better i will be graduating with an english degree. i plan to work with children though, which might wind up meaning grad school but will mean that my specific degree isn't a detriment. it does however mean that college is BORDERLINE COMPLETELY POINTLESS for me. sigh.

Re: should be reading catcher in the rye.

isabelthespy — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:15:24 -0000

i mean, i agree with you completely, but if we're thinking about this as a way to maximize people's awareness of and sensitivity to these issues then there might be ways in which this could backfire... i dunno. maybe i'm wrong and it wouldn't backfire. but it's so easy to be able to see people complaining that their schools were trying to "brainwash them with feminism" or whatever. but maybe the one who would have eventually learned would learn faster, and the ones who didn't wouldn't have anyway, so it would be a net gain. i dunno.

Re: should be reading catcher in the rye.

isabelthespy — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:45:43 -0000

k so i'm in the middle of writing a paper and there's a decent chance i'm going to come back and babble at you at some length, but for now i'll say, basically, YEAH SERIOUSLY.

interestingly, i was going to major in sociology but have switched to english and actually have wound up discussing race & gender in a number of my classes (though not always as critically as i would have liked) - my class on protest literature obviously focused pretty hugely on this stuff, and actually i think it was to its benefit that it didn't start out approaching them in a critical way but began from the words of individuals belonging to certain groups themselves. my southern lit class also obviously discussed race and gender a lot (interestingly we had a couple southerners in my southern lit class who at some point said something along the lines of, "i'm really glad i took this class as it's woken me up to how fucked up some of the aspects of the place i come from are that i take for granted"). but of course, i have very much an outside interest in these subjects so it is totally possible to not ever talk about them. like in one english class we talked about the invisible man without talking about race almost at all, i was like wtf my inner marxist can't handle this.

...but i think it's also possible in sociology, to be honest, at least here, by sticking to like society of organizations and leadership and whatever classes (not that those aren't important obviously). also no one in an english class, unlike in my sociology methods class that i took, has ever referred to an area of a city as being "more minority."

and i've pretty much had one conversation that i can recall, with exactly one person, about these kinds of issues (except maybe a handful about some more theoretical gender concepts with someone here i've been friends with since i was 8).

but i also don't know like how to fix that because i mean, i FUCKING HATE required courses, no marine biology did NOT improve my life, nor is classical chinese political & ethical thought, so i feel weird saying some courses should be required (though i do think basic statistics should be mandatory everywhere. in high school).

plus like... i do feel comfortable at the very least talking about various issues, and i feel like i've spent long enough thinking about them that i am at a point sometimes where if it's clear someone has NEVER thought about them i get a kind of "are you serious" reaction to them and then feel like i have to play nice or something. i've been attempting to think seriously about feminism since... 10th grade? i think that's when i read the beauty myth? so, like 5 years now? and i've been trying to learn & think about race & class issues.. maybe since 12th grade or freshman year? 3 years or so? and school has had FUCK-ALL to do with my education in these topics beyond some super basic fact-getting - it's been mostly reading blogs (because blogs allow you access to experiences that are different from you, and also aren't required, like a lot of academic texts, to present them in a primarily-theoretical manner, which DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON PEOPLE'S-LIVES-AS-THEORY, just don't right now). i feel like i am at the very least committed to always thinking about them seriously and trying to learn more, but like, if i were forced to take a class on them without that pre-existing interest i feel like maybe i would become resentful or something... you know? like, that can happen.

orrr what you're alluding to can happen and you wind up with situations like my friend who thinks that private schools are the kind of schools that prepare people to take race issues seriously because talking about them means you understand them more than people who actually live them, or something. (MUCH MORE OF MY OH SO FASCINATING THOUGHTS ON THIS SUBJECT, KIND OF, HERE: http://isabelthespy.tumblr.... )

tl;dr I HATE SCHOOL PLEASE SOMEONE LET ME GO BACK TO WORKING FULL TIME WITHOUT A B.A.

ok back to motherfucking wordsworth

Re: i just looked at the polanski list

isabelthespy — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:54:59 -0000

i'm not sure exactly what you're reading into this post, so if i've misunderstood you i'm sorry - i think maybe you're confused about my use of the word "fan"? for me, when i say i'm a FAN of something it implies a certain kind of affection and illusion of personal relationship with them as a person beyond just the art they make. it's silly, i know, but that's how it goes. so for example, i enjoy some woody allen movies and think annie hall in particular is actually really brilliant, but my relationship with woody allen begins and ends with just the movies themselves. ditto roman polanski. alfonso cuaron had a certain kind of personal nostalgic appeal for me because he made a really lovely adaptation (as i recall, i mean i was like 7) of one of my favorite novels when i was a child, and turned my favorite book of the harry potter series into my favorite book of the series, and i don't know, i just have a thing for him.

it's like, if the lead singer of modest mouse does something shitty, whatever, i fucking love his music but i have no affection for him as a celebrity. but if kelly clarkson did something shitty it would make me irrationally sad because kelly clarkson in general makes me irrationally happy somehow beyond just her music itself.

like i said it's really silly and for all i know kelly clarkson secretly kills puppies or something. but it is what it is. but generally, if you can't see someone's horrible things in their work, then i agree, you can look at the work apart from that. though for me personally, i will always have a moment of remembering them when i think about the work. but it doesn't change my opinion of the work itself, i mean the pianist is probably my number-two favorite movie of all time.

uhh wow that was long, the short answer is, i enjoy getting irrationally happy because of people whose art i like, and i get sad when i used to be able to do that and then suddenly i can't anymore.

Re: Champagne Candy

isabelthespy — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 22:57:51 -0000

not to like tell you what to blog about or anything because this is not any of my business even a little bit, but i'm just saying if you ever did wanna write a post about how it changed your life, i would really dig it.

Re: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - 103

isabelthespy — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 16:34:14 -0000

ah, thanks! i saw them live last night & i reeeally wanted to hear a studio of this song afterwards!

Re: very filled with dreams - fuckyeahtattoos: evermore: Tattoo of the...

isabelthespy — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:14:34 -0000

ah! thanks so much!

Re: New weekly feature starting tomorrow...

isabelthespy — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:44:02 -0000

I don't know if this is the kind of thing you're looking for, since it's not exactly reassuring, but Louise Gluck's "Earthly Love" is one of the most psychologically astute poems I've ever read; in the third stanza, Gluck writes, "We are all human -/we protect ourselves/as well as we can/even to the point of denying/clarity, the point/of self-deception" which is a true an observation of human psychology as I've ever read anywhere, it seems.