Monday, July 18, 2016

Podcast Starter Pack


     Want to start a podcast?  Not sure quite how to get yourself set up?  Here's a quick guide to getting yourself set up with the basic necessities!



1.  Idea

     This is the most important thing, absolutely 100%, and I'll tell you why; without a good idea, the rest of it doesn't matter.  You can have the best recording and editing equipment in the world, but if what you produce isn't fully thought out and you aren't passionate about it, no one's going to want to listen.

     In fact, passion for the idea is more important than it even being well thought-out or logical or easy to follow, etc., etc., because if you're passionate about it, the rest will come--someone will be interested in your work if you're passionate enough, because people are attracted to passion.  Don't half-ass something generically cool, guys, whole-ass something you really really care about.

Image result for audacity2.  Audacity

     If you're looking for a cheap high-quality in-compute recording studio, look no further than audacity (downloadable here).  Audacity is free to download and use, it allows you to record, mix, match, sync, add effects, and even synthesize some simple tones.  With an easy-to-find guide or a little experimenting, you can do all kinds of cool stuff with your audio, and it's really easy to add music or sound effects off other aud. tracks or MP3s.  Plus, provided you have the right installments, you can easily export your work as MP3 tracks as well.

      Basically, if recording studios were stores, Audacity would be Walmart.

3.  Recording Device

     Also extremely important; the podcast just doesn't happen if there's no way to get your audio onto the internet.  You can record with a simple mic plug-in, your iPhone, probably (I don't own one, so I've just taken to assuming that smart phones can do everything), a mic headset, etc, but if you're looking to do this right, and for the long-term, I recommend investing in a nice standing mic and a pop filter.

     I use a Snowball myself, and I'm super happy with it; it was much cheaper than most recording devices of like quality, and it fits my needs perfectly, with a range of hearing that allows you to record at a distance, without having to worry about picking up your next-door neighbor shuffling across their floor.

  4.  Soundcloud

     There are other podcasting stations you can use for free, of course, but I think soundcloud is an easy place to start--it's free to sign up, simple to use, simple to stream, simple to download.  Definitely look into other online venues too, but Soundcloud is always a safe place to start.



5.  Logo

     A logo is important--whether it's a photo with writing on it, a drawing you made yourself, something you commissioned from an artist friend, a stock photo or a collection of clipart, your logo is the first way that people will judge your podcast.  Make sure it fits the tone and theme of your work, and has something to do with what your podcast is going to be about.

     Maybe don't use a picture of the sky if it's about dogs, for example.


     Have all that together?  Have a script ready, if it's scripted, or friends together if it's a talk show, etc, etc?  Then you're ready to leap into the wonderful world of podcasting!

     Go, my friends!  Go forth and create.

Friday, July 15, 2016

On Repo! The Genetic Opera: Why "Genetic Emancipation" Falls Flat; a Critique of the Cure Narrative

SPOILERS FOR REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA AHEAD


     Let me be blunt:

     Repo! The Genetic Opera is my shit.

     I waited three years to see it after watching "Let The Monster Rise" on Youtube, and I'm honestly considering the DVD now that's off Netflix (a true travesty).  The musical score is amazing, every song furthers the narrative, the actors' voices are transcendent (give me Anthony Stewart Head in everything please, I need his voice in every soundtrack from here until the end of time), the scenery is perfectly eerie, the way the story is told is fascinating and engaging, the characters are delightfully complex and twisted, and I just can't praise this movie enough.  Someone hire me to talk this movie up to people, I'll do it and I'll do it with soul.

[warning again, spoilers from hereon in]

     Repo! deals with themes of family and genetics, which are very important to me--Shilo(the protagonist)'s rebellion against her genetic code drives the narrative and the stakes; she inherited a genetic disease from her mother which causes her to be pale and sickly, her hair falling out and her blood pressure low.  Her father wants her to stay locked inside her room--she is, after all, all that he has left of his dead wife, and the only thing left that he loves.

     None of this sits well with Shilo, who poses the question in her song "Infected,"

          "How much of it's genetics, how much of it is fate, how much of it depends on the choices that we make?  He says I have her eyes, do I also inherit his shame?  Is heredity the culprit, can I stop it, or am I a slave?"

     This is the thesis question to the entire musical--the question of what your genetics really mean.

     As a person with poor genetics myself, dealing with fibro (chronic pain) and Tourette's (a neurological movement disorder) on top of other sundry concerns, this question is one I often ask in my own works, and its exploration is in some ways an exploration of self.  How much choice do we have?  How much of our family's shame do we inherit?  Are we destined to make the same mistakes as our predecessors?

     Repo!  The Genetic Opera does a wonderful job of exploring these themes, and I could break the movie down to talk about each piece individually (I might do that one day), but for now I'll skip to what's got me agitated--the end.



     Spoilers again, if you didn't read, or ignored, the first two (one must cover all their bases, mustt one not?); at the end of Repo! Shilo has discovered that her father is the Repo Man, Rotti Largo, owner of Geneco, has called for the Repo Man to kill Blind Mag, Shilo's God Mother (who took her own life instead), and Rotti has put out a call to destroy Nathan, who wants to kill Rotti for stealing Shilo from him.  Rotti offers Shilo the chance to inherit Geneco (he's dying and his children are human garbage fires), but she can only cash in on the inheritance if she kills her father.

     Rotti then reveals that Shilo was never sick to begin with, but that her father poisoned all her "medicine."  He insists that she fight through the pain when she starts to redline, and she passes out.  When she wakes up, she's cured.

     She decides she can't kill her father, she's not a murderer like him, and Rotti shoots him instead.  Rotti then dies as well, and Shilo comes to the conclusion that no one is a slave to their genetic code and we all have the power to choose what we are, in the aptly named song "Genetic Emancipation."

     She then walks out of the opera house and vanishes into the night, the thesis properly answered before the Graverobber jumps in for the last stasima to hammer home a moralization about grudges gone too far.

     This is great, wonderful, beautiful, perfect.  I love it, I admire it, I ADORE it.

     Except--for Shilo's illness.




     The reveal that she was never sick is super dramatic and says so much about the depths of Nathan's twisted need to keep what he loved locked away from the world for only him to see.  From that perspective, it's a great choice, a very dramatic, unexpected, welcomed twist.

     But it means that Shilo is totally free of her "genetic" burdens--in fact, she never had a genetic burden, just an abusive father.  It's a cure narrative--subverted and wound around a nail, but a cure narrative nonetheless.  Worse, it's an easy cure narrative--she didn't do anything to earn or fight for it, she just denied herself medical treatment, passed out, and woke up better.

    It really weakens the message of the film.  It's supposed to empower and tell us that we, too, can be free of our genetic worries, that our lives are in our hands and we can do anything and shed our blood ties like water from a rainslicker.

     But Shilo's ties are gone--she has no kin left to shame her, just their memory, and she doesn't have to worry about being sick anymore.  She didn't even cut any of her own ties, they were all cut for her.  Despite her insistence that everyone has a choice, Shilo never did--all those decisions were made for her.  On top of being cured, it wasn't even done with any agency.  Had she figured it out for herself, or devised a cure on her lonesome, or even with help, had she done something, anything to cure herself of her disease, I would probably be a million times less upset, but like many narratives based around disabled people and teenage girls, she was deprived of her choice and agency in the matter.

     So for someone who still has to deal with the viruses in my genetic code every single day of my life, who relies on my medication just to make it through the day, someone who can maybe run away from my family if I want to but can never cast off the broken strands of my DNA, the ending rings hollow.  It feels like Shilo has no leg to stand on.  Her "Genetic Emancipation" is closer to a Phenotypal Emancipation, a Poison Emancipation, a Parental Emancipation--her triumph isn't over her veins except in the sense that she's eradicated what's lurking therein, and, again, she didn't even work for it.  She only had to sit and not take her meds.

     .....  Which, now that I think about it, is a really fucked up thing to leave as an example of the "right" thing to do.  If Shilo had still been sick, she would have died.  Not even figuratively, ignoring her medication like that could have straight up killed her, or at the very least caused some serious damage by the time they got her to a hospital.


Take your meds, kids.

     It also intimates that those of us living with these disorders are somehow lazy or cowardly--being cured is so simple, you don't need medication, you just need to get back to your roots and you'll be better in no time!  Just take the magical one-time-treatment cure-all and everything will be fine, you'll be all better!  What, you're still sick?  How can that be!?  Well, you're just not hoping hard enough, if Shilo can be cured after passing out for two seconds, why can't you?





     With her illness looming over her and a continued need to procure and take her meds, the ending would have been a little more of a downer, sure, but it would have been more powerful for a girl still struggling with her condition to announce herself emancipated--bound to her genetic code, maybe, but not a slave to it, able to make her own decisions even with her limitations.

     I would have loved to see a sick Shilo tell everyone that they were free, because sure, it would be a different kind of free for her, but it would be an authentic free, and for those of us who live with chronic illnesses and other disabilities, freedom is of a different sort; I want to hear it said that we do have limitations, but we can still go chasing flies.

     It would also be important to show that for Shilo, her biggest obstacle is her father rather than her disease, which is sometimes the case with real disabled people--it would all be much more manageable without overprotective or under-sympathetic family members getting in the way.

     I have limitations, but I can still catch flies, and stand on the balcony, and every once in a while, when I'm feeling good, I can go to that opera, damn it.  Assuming that the only happy ending for Shilo is the one where she's no longer sick is an assumption and assertion that the disabled and the chronically ill can never be happy.

     Illness makes life hard, but not impossible--if she had something that was medically manageable, there's no reason she couldn't have had a happy ending anyhow.  It's not even like the ending was terribly optimistic, either--a sheltered teenage girl walks off into the night in a crime-infested city in a post-apocalyptic world with no friends or family left alive.  Her best bet is already with the Graverobber, and seeing as he has great connections, no qualms about getting what he wants from dangerous places, and a crush on our heroine, I'm sure he would have been happy to supply her with the medication she needs.  Though perhaps at a price....

     BOOM!  Sequel.  Eat your heart out, Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich.


 

     Look, I love, love, love this movie, to the stars and back!  But it has its flaws.  On its own, this ending would even be clever and cheerful, but stacked together with other cure narratives (of which there are thousands), it sends a pretty harmful message to the very people it's ostensibly speaking to.
  
     And maybe that's the problem--this story, written about a girl with a genetic blood disorder questioning what it means to be bitch-slapped by your genetic code, wasn't really written for us, the people who actually live with this very conundrum every day.  It was written for the people who worry that they'll become alcoholics like their dad, or make the same mistakes their mother did, or die at age fifty because that seems to be the family curse.  And that's fine!
     
     It's just ... sad.  

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Pet Peeve: Scythe vs. Sickle



     This is purely a personal pet peeve; I often see people using the terms "scythe" and "sickle" interchangeably.  It comes up a lot in stories about the grim reaper, or fanfiction about canons wherein characters use sickles or scythes as weapons, and once in a great while when discussing the communist flag.  Thankfully, people writing stories about farms tend to know the difference.
     Usually.
     So for all of your edification, and to get this off my chest, this is a sickle:


And this is a scythe:


Scythes are long-handled and meant for reaping wheat and other crops from a distance, so that one needn't bend down to slice.  They're typically two-hand.
     Sickles, on the other hand, are short-handled, meant to be wielded with one hand, and require the user to bend closer to the crops/target in order to get the job done.
     So!  Just to recap, the Grim Reaper uses a scythe:


     ... But Karkat Vantas uses a sickle.



     This has been Pet Peeves with Maggie C. and you have been Edified.  Hopefully this has been helpful to some of you.

     If anyone out there has any pet peeves about commonly mixed-up words or phrases, please comment below.  Maybe I'll use your suggestion for a future article. ;)