This is the sorta segment I wish still existed in kids’ shows. Soothing voiceover, mellow music, no flashy graphics. Just a calm behind-the-scenes look at something you might call mundane but that most of us would never have a clue about if no one pulled the curtain back to reveal its inner workings.
Okay but imagine being in kindergarten and seeing something like this, you would absolutely change your mind about wanting to be a fire fighter or teacher or whatever Job you’ve been told is cool and possible to grow up to do because wait a minute it’s just like play-doh, there’s so much it’s kept in trash cans, you can use your hands to smear icing everywhere? It smells like cinnamon buns all the time?! Yes please!
I vaguely remember having a field trip to a bakery in kindergarten and thinking croissants were magical and that I wanted to make them in the future cuz kneading dough looked fun.
This is way more engaging and easier to watch than those sped-up videos with no voiceover and trashy pop music playing over the top.
It actually does make me remember similar segments in shows I watched growing up, like that one program. I don’t remember what exactly the segment was about but it followed a young boy, and he briefly mentioned stopping at a friend’s house and trying goat milk for the first time.
Very little else stuck with me but it sure made me curious about goat milk.
why watch big budget hollywood action movies when you can just watch japanese children’s shows
Crazy how much of that was just one, continuous shot.
#the state of western action films is just embarrassing #bourne has a lot to answer for
Man, the TV critics all lost their shit over Mr. Robot’s uber-prestige Sam Esmail gimmick episodes, but meanwhile sentai can just do this, no prestige needed. See also: One Cut of the Dead.
Also the way they didn’t even bother justifying or disguising the safety crash pad is admirable. More shows should do that.
Also, props to them for making everyone look competent. Yeah, it’s clear that the heroes would wipe the floor with any of the villains in a one-on-one fight, but the villains aren’t actually trying to defeat them: they dramatically outnumber the heroes, and all they need to do (apparently) is for one of them to get away with the MacGuffin, and that’s a much more tenable goal. Having the extended action sequence also be an intense game of keep-away makes it much more interesting than your typical “everyone beats each other up” fight
Something I think is really important to remember when doing fandom analysis (and literary criticism in general, since it was a litcrit movement that opened my eyes to this), is “You can only analyze the text that exists.”
“But the creator was pressured into changing their vision for the worse!” Sometimes this is wishful thinking. Sometimes it is demonstrably true. Sometimes it’s ambiguous. If there are documented issues affecting the production of a work of art, you can and should absolutely talk about those as part of your analysis! But ‘the creator’s vision’ isn’t real. The version that was actually made and actually exists is. Once I commented that I disliked how an asexual character had been handled in a book, and the person I was talking to said, “Oh, I bet it’s their editor’s fault.” But even if that were true … the book is published. I was responding to the portrayal in the published book. I can’t analyze a text based on what the other person in the conversation imagined the author’s intent might have been. Even when we know for sure that a story would have been very different without certain pressures (an editor who nixed an author’s original ending, an executive producer who vetoed all mentions of queer characters, a show that was cancelled prematurely and had to wrap up its plot in a couple of episodes instead of another full season), we can talk about those pressures and we can talk about things we know were cut and we can talk about how the bad pacing of those final episodes were significantly influenced by the circumstances under which they were made. But we can’t talk about the platonic ideal of the piece of media, the version that would have existed if the circumstances were perfect, because it’s not real. Every person is going to have their own idea on how it would have turned out and these will be wildly divergent from person to person. It’s not helpful or productive to get mad at people for criticizing or otherwise engaging with the actual piece of art instead of the version you made up in your head.
“But I understand this character better than the author! They would never have done X!” Look, we’ve all been there. Do whatever you want with your own personal interpretation. But it’s just that: an interpretation. The character isn’t real, and there isn’t a secret better version of the text waiting to be freed from the tyranny of the person who’s actually writing it. You can write an AU, or talk about how, for example, a character in an episodic TV show with many different writers suffers from a lack of consistent characterization, or make a post about how you think X plot point was badly handled or poorly written. And you can absolutely give the character the storylines and development that you want them to have! In this case, you’re creating your own text, and it exists, and it can be analyzed either on its own or in relation to the source material. But you can’t expect everyone to agree with you, and you can’t believe that your interpretation of a character is more real than anyone else's—and especially not that it’s more real than how the character is actually written in the text. I see this very often with people who want their favorite characters to be more progressive than they are. Yes, maybe the author’s sexism is part of why this character acted sexist. But if you are rejecting part of the text you are rejecting part of the text. Other people will choose not to do this, and you can’t blame them for analyzing a character or society as they are actually presented.
For people who really love fiction, it’s very easy to fall into magical thinking. The stories and characters feel real, like they exist somewhere out there in their true, uncorrupted form, unsullied by authorial bias and executive meddling and the long, messy, awkward process of actually making and sharing a creative work. But they don’t. A piece of art is a material object, a series of words or sounds or images or bits of data that has been put into its current form by one or more human beings. That is what’s real. Personal interpretations can be wonderful, transformative works and alternative readings can be powerful and illuminating. But you can’t analyze a hypothetical the same way you can something concrete. You can’t be so caught up in your own feelings that you forget that other interpretations are possible. And you can only do textual analysis on a text that actually exists.
God I love Apothecary Diaries. Maomao is like a dog with a mouth full of Lego bricks to me. Babygirl don’t eat that
So imagine you go to a brothel and when you get there it’s full of beautiful women but then also there’s this dog. And when you ask “hey what’s with the dog” they’re like oh the dog, we love the dog, everybody loves the dog, the dog collects rocks from the yard. And you’re like “okay” but later you find the dog gathering piles of rocks and cementing them into a beautiful river-stone wall to protect the building. And you’re like “I didn’t even know dogs could do that”. And they’re like “that’s nothing, check this out” and then the dog starts doing multiplication with the rocks. You’re like “what the fuck” and they go “nahh she’s just getting started”. And they start giving the dog complex mathematical formulas that the dog answers by laying out the rocks. And you go “holy shit that’s the smartest dog I’ve ever seen”. And they go “it’s the smartest dog in the world” and you’re like “wow that’s amazing”. And then you look outside and the dog is eating the rocks. And you’re like “can the dog eatrocks?”. And they’re like “no”
One day you find out the dog went missing. “We don’t know where the dog went but we miss the dog”, the beautiful women tell you. A year later the dog comes back. The dog is accompanied by the Duke of wales. “My gardener stole this dog but now I would like to buy it”, he says. “The dog has built me a beautiful castle and solved the viscount’s mysterious murder.” You aren’t sure how the dog did that by stacking rocks but you’re still incredibly impressed. The beautiful women are so happy to see the dog again. “Did you know that the dog can ride a bike?” The Duke asks. You look at the dog. The dog is obviously concealing a mouth full of gravel
This is the post that enticed me to watch apothecary diaries and now that I am watching apothecary diaries I am constantly pointing at the very deliberately cat-coded character, whose name is ‘cat-cat’, and shouting 'this dog can EAT ROCKS?’.
I’ve gotten so many messages about this post because Maomao is EXPLICITLY cat-coded with cat motifs and cat associations with cat jokes but the truth is there was no energy I could think of that captured her baffling aura like a large old farm dog dog eating a rock. Cat eating plastic? Cat opening doors? Cat eating legos? No, she is my grandpa’s very clever old sheepdog who would roll his eyes at you and tiredly and patiently perform very human tasks as you asked him to like a 56 year old underpaid chain-smoking senior retail colleague and then turn around and try and eat a rock. In a world of elegant show-breed cats she is a cat yes but also The Most Dog cat there ever was. And she’s eating rocks
ALT
Yeah actually, one day you give the dog a bath and it’s the most majestic giant Norwegian forest cat you’ve ever seen in your entire life. But☝️it’s still an absolute FIEND for eating rocks
ALT
