primeideal

Couple interesting links from File 770 the other day. The hotel that hosted Shore Leave (and several other cons I have not attended) is closing in a couple months. "Many fans noticed the hotel was not being invested in since 2018" I was only there briefly but I can confirm the AC was...not invested in. :( Sounds like it has a lot of good memories.

I thought this link was interesting, less so the parts about AI and more so the parts about resentment. Because I'm definitely the kind of person who is always bouncing between different creative projects for fun, whether that be fanfic, roleplaying, poetry, conlanging, whatever...but I've also been that person kind of wistfully staring at "real" writers and thinking, "I wish that was me, but it's probably too late, there are so many people like me that I'll never make it." And, like, that's not true! Part of the reason why I was lurking File 770 was because I'd actually gotten some good news about another submission and now I'm getting hyped for that! But it's a good reminder to tell myself, even when I'm feeling that way, a. don't take it out on other people (I think I'm pretty good about this), and b. let that be an urge to push myself forward. Every creative person needs a healthy level of "you know what, dang it, my ideas are at least as good as some of the stuff out there, if they can do it, so can I!"

Okay, so the other day I'm at the Nationals baseball game in Washington DC. And all the home team players have their own walk-up music (batters) or entering-the-game-in-relief music (pitchers). Some of them are punny. Like, Alex Call is "Call Me Maybe." Jacob Young is "Forever Young" (by Alphaville, not the Bob Dylan song or the will.i.am remix). And then there's relief pitcher Hunter Harvey.

( political topics discussed in snarky ways )

I feel like I already made this post, but maybe I just thought about it and grumbled IRL instead of posting, heh. It's a thought I've had before.

When I was in middle school, my band directors were very proud of us (and, by extension, themselves for teaching us so well). They would say stuff like "this is a pretty tricky piece, there are high schools that would probably have difficulty performing this, but we're giving it to you eighth-graders. Why? Because you're awesome and we know you can do it." And you know what? It worked for me. I appreciated being patted on the back and it pumped me up, even if I was only one of dozens, to feel like we were collectively "overachievers" in this context. Later, my brother and sister would make fun of this tendency from the directors (similar things in high school).

So, yes, there are times when telling your target audience "you know what? you're very special and talented, pat yourself on the back!" succeeds in giving them an ego boost, making them inclined to view you in a favorable light. There are also times when they will roll their eyes and laugh at you.

But there are times when this can backfire and just make you look stupid. "Hey guys, guess what? Not a lot of people know this, but actually, the earth goes around the sun! So next time you see some backwards person spouting geocentric nonsense, just remember: the earth really does go around the sun. The more you know! (: "

Presumably the intended goal here is, when people who actually do know that the earth goes around the sun hear this message, they think "wow, this is an obscure fact but I'm so enlightened I already knew that! Better pat myself on the back because I'm really smart." What actually happens is, they think, "this person I'm talking to has no idea what the 'average person' knows."

( RL/politics example )

Following on from this: if the messy beginnings of Major League Baseball map onto the messy beginnings of the USA, then the baseball equivalent of Paul Revere is Tinker to Evers to Chance. Both are notable, but are perhaps even more famous than they "should" be due to some poetry/rhyming verse. Later appraisals (20th century) have been like "actually, the poem wasn't all that great, too much rhyming" and "these guys might not have made it to the Hall of Fame as individuals." But then re-revisionism in the last few years is like "Tinker, Evers, and Chance are noteworthy as more than the sum of their parts because they represent the many regional/cultural traditions [Californians doing their own thing out west, rural Midwest, Irish Catholics in the northeast] that fed into the modernization/"professionalization" of baseball in the 1900s decade" (I read a book about them recently) and "Paul Revere's Ride should be read in context, the context is that the Civil War was about to break out and people needed to be ready to fight for the Union/freedom again."